Saxby Chambliss (4.00 / 2)

The ads I've put up linking to Neil the Ethical Werewolf's Saxby Chambliss site have been getting a click-thru rate of 2.2%, and among people who see the ads via the keyword "Saxby Chambliss", it's over 3.5%. Of course, it helps having "Saxby Chambliss" in the URL.

So I've sent over 120 people to the site, most of whom had been searching for info on Chambliss.

I was feeling pretty good about the efficiency of this until someone pointed out that Obama spent about a dime per viewer of the infomercial. Now if I could get 30 minutes of a voter's attention for a dime, that would be efficient!

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by: Brian Weatherson @ Mon Nov 03, 2008 at 04:13:35 AM UTC

comparing to a TV audience (0.00 / 0)

Tell your disparaging friend that click-throughs and impressions from a Google campaign are a far higher-quality contact than a TV view. People who viewed your Google ad had to conduct an active search, which shows intent, while many TV viewers are passive and disinterested.  

Save Our Schools! March & National Call to Action, July 28-31, 2011 in Washington, DC: http://www.saveourschoolsmarch...

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by: jeffbinnc @ Mon Nov 03, 2008 at 12:09:11 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

PUMA Factor (0.00 / 0)

Chris, I have read a few of the right leaning blogs and they keep saying that the PUMA factor will bring McCain a surprise victory in PA and other Hillary states.  How much do you think this is a factor in reality?

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by: ckratz @ Mon Nov 03, 2008 at 04:14:20 AM UTC

PUMAs (4.00 / 1)

Since Hillary won MA and RI by more than she won PA, and CA by nearly as much, I'm more worried about dropping MA, RI and CA due to PUMAs than I am worried about dropping PA.

How hard is it to realise that almost all Hillary voters had a Clinton-Obama-McCain preference ordering? In the primary, the Clinton voters didn't feel bad about saying they were Clinton voters.

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by: Brian Weatherson @ Mon Nov 03, 2008 at 04:35:48 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

None (0.00 / 0)

I'm not Chris, but that's my analysis.  Any honest Hillary supporter that hasn't been thoroughly pissed off about how McCain has run his campaign wasn't a Democrat to start with.  I could see a small, small, small number of people staying home, but vote for McCain no chance.  

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by: zelt @ Mon Nov 03, 2008 at 04:39:52 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

actual data (4.00 / 1)

A friend did some Obama campaign work a couple of weeks ago: visiting voters who had expressed a preference for Clinton in the Pennsylvania primary and assessing whether they're now Obama voters who should be in the GOTV file. This is a highly Republican area but with a considerable number of Republican women who had changed their party registration to vote for Clinton (that's my personal data from a relative and a neighbor!). Of the dozen registered Democrats who had said they were voting for Clinton in the primary, only one stated an intention of voting for McCain in the general, and the others are now in the GOTV file.

So no, I wouldn't worry about PUMAs. They're all in Manhattan, apparently, where their dozen votes won't be noticed. And at an advanced age for such changes, my formerly Republican relative the "Hillary" fan is now an avid Democrat rather than a PUMA, and she despises McCain.  

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by: Joyful Alternative @ Mon Nov 03, 2008 at 05:38:00 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

I have a theory, too (4.00 / 3)

I think that a giant spaghetti monster created the universe. Would you like to offer your thoughts on this theory?

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by: Chris Bowers @ Mon Nov 03, 2008 at 06:34:53 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

Palin factor (4.00 / 2)

The choice of Sarah Palin, whose negatives are higher among women than men, is so inordinately offensive to me as a Hillary supporter that I have a hard time seeing many people fall for that. Clinton has reached out many times and in many ways to her supporters to ask them to support Obama and evidence indicates that most of them have come aboard. It seems likely to me that even most of her donors who haven't gone over to donate to Obama are planning on marking their ballot for him.

There have been a few promenent idiots going off the rails. Like lady de Rothschild who recently embarassed herself by comparing a tax credit Obama proposes for low income households, similar to the EITC, to incipient socialism. But, to appropriate the wonderful Eisenhower quote Rosenberg brings up a few posts back, their number is negligible and they are stupid.

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by: Natasha Chart @ Mon Nov 03, 2008 at 06:57:42 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

Facebook Social Ads (0.00 / 0)

Great, cheap and underused advertising tool. MySpace has a new platform too.  

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by: Max and the Marginalized @ Mon Nov 03, 2008 at 04:36:05 AM UTC

Literature dropping. (4.00 / 3)

  Calling it "lit dropping" makes it sound easy.  It's a pain.  I spent the weekend in Delaware County, Pennsylvania at a bustling staging location.  It was good work, but I did not appreciate being heckled in the neighborhood where I grew up.  I did manage to push an undecided who had been taken by the aunt-is-an-illegal-alien story.  I also did not appreciate finding a big pile of weather-beaten Obama and Sestak signs on the sidewalk in front of a McCain/Palin house.  Very suspicious...
 I'm glad your Norm Coleman ad is so effective.  I really want that victory in Minnesota.
 Please give a Republican a rice crispy treat.  Once he's taken a bite, tell him it was made with street money.  This should make him hilariously nauseous.

John McCain lets lobbyists shape his economic policy

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by: cilerder86 @ Mon Nov 03, 2008 at 04:36:45 AM UTC

I voted today in IN (4.00 / 1)

Waited about an hour.  Everyone seemed in a good mood.  Caught some conversations about voting preference, but nothing notable.  Felt damn good tapping the screen for Obama.  Just an observation here, but McCain and RNC must not be targeting my slice of Indiana for their really negative ads.  In fact, I didn't see or hear a single McCain ad this weekend.  Obama has still been advertising plenty.    

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by: zelt @ Mon Nov 03, 2008 at 04:45:38 AM UTC

Phone banked in Seattle yesterday (4.00 / 1)

The office was totally jammed with walk-in volunteers.  They literally ran out of phone lines and had 20-30 people calling on cells in the side room.  They were training canvassers 50 at a time, and had a line out the door just to sign in.

All of this--in Seattle!  And the office is not that easy to find or convenient to get to.  It was pretty cool.

I was calling college kids' cell phones out of Bellingham, got a couple of already voteds, and two strong Obamas / undecided Gregoires.  Gov. race will be much, much closer than the Prez race out here.

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by: TValley @ Mon Nov 03, 2008 at 04:59:50 AM UTC

Did more canvassing today (4.00 / 1)

more tomorow. Al Franken and Paul Wellstone's son David were there when we showed up and we heard them give a pep talk. Last Senate debate was tonight and Al did great.

A little off topic. But Jerry Nadler is a total asshole. I have lost all respect for him.

http://blogs.abcnews.com/polit...

What a dick.

John McCain: Beacuse lobbyists should have more power

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by: Populista @ Mon Nov 03, 2008 at 05:57:04 AM UTC

Good activism ideas (4.00 / 1)

Canvassing and phonebanking do not come naturally to me. I have anxiety about approaching strangers and I should probably work on that in therapy some time.  Knowing what's at stake this election motivated me to feel the fear and do it anyway and I did some canvassing in Nevada last week.  It helped that I knocked on doors with an extroverted partner.

Anyway, you can see why your personal paid media campaign would appeal to me. I decided to do a "No on Prop 8" ad against the noxious Mormon-funded ballot measure to change California's state constitution to prohibit same-sex marriage.  I wanted to link to an LA Times editorial, but the "Yes on Prop 8" people placed an ad right next to the "No on Prop 8" LA Times headline!  So I decided to link to a county newspaper article that does a good job of debunking the lies and gets the equality and justice message across.  

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by: aperio @ Mon Nov 03, 2008 at 08:23:17 AM UTC

I had been targeting ads for Obama around taxes. (0.00 / 0)

I got the highest click through (about 1.75%) for a straightforward ad about how Obama will lower most people's taxes, and a link to a factcheck.org page.

I stopped the campaign a short while ago when the polls went in our favor. Unfortunately I can't do gotv tomorrow (have a grad school required event that cannot be rescheduled) but will make up for that with an ad for Charlie Brown (and only b/c I'm a big Peanuts fan).

Thanks for the idea. Let's do this.

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by: terrafirma9 @ Mon Nov 03, 2008 at 12:24:23 PM UTC

Drag them...don't wait until after work to vote (0.00 / 0)

I actually think one of the mose useful things to do on election is to, literally, drag people to the polls and to get them to stop making excuses about not voting NOW.

Take Virginia, polls close at 7:00 PM.  Say you normally leave work at 4:30 but the copy maching blows up and you can't get out till 5:30, add an unexpected errand and a moderate traffic jam and boom, it's 7:00.

DRAG PEOPLE TO VOTE, rice krispies or not!

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by: howardpark @ Mon Nov 03, 2008 at 13:30:38 PM UTC

Nutter co-worker (0.00 / 0)

comes up to me this morning telling me how "nervous" he is that in spite of all the polls Obama will loose.  I asked him if he had volunteered for the campaign, and he said no because Illinois (where we are) is going to go for Obama.  I pointed out that he could have traveled to swing states and that hundreds of people have done that and he countered by saying that his kids who live in DC had traveled to Florida -- as though that somehow answered my question about why HE hadn't volunteered!  I went onto the MyBO site and printed out information on two phone banks happening tonight a few blocks from our workplace and put him on his desk with a note saying that instead of being nervous at home tonight (which is what he said he would be doing) he could go to one of these places and help. No response yet.

Meantime, I will be at the Daniel Biss for State Representative campaign tonight picking up my materials for tomorrow and getting my final instructions. I was at the Dan Seals campaign last night and they assigning a large number of volunteers to be passers with the idea that their real job will be to encourage people to stay in line.  We REALLY have to get this line situation fixed for 2010 and 2012.

Happy election all!!!

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by: yoda @ Mon Nov 03, 2008 at 15:53:10 PM UTC

Martin/Chambliss (0.00 / 0)

Like, BW, I did a Saxby Chambliss/Jim Martin ad.  I started on Friday night.  Overall it was getting about .9% click-through rate, but all day Saturday it was about 2.5.  I was happy with this.  About 3000 imprints and 27 click-througs during the whole weekend.  I only targeted GA for this ad.

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by: Andy Wallis @ Mon Nov 03, 2008 at 16:10:24 PM UTC