rp08orbust
09-09-2011, 01:11 PM
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This post is a combination of a recap of the Georgia GOP straw poll on August 27, the sharing of a grassroots campaign tactic and a fundraising plea. I meant to post this right after the straw poll, but at the time I was bummed out over another narrow straw poll loss and just didn't get around to it until now. The results of the straw poll at the Georgia GOP's Annual Fish Fry on Saturday, August 27 were as follows:
Actual Straw Poll Results
Herman Cain: 232 26.1%
Ron Paul: 229 25.7%
Rick Perry: 179 20.1%
Newt Gingrich: 162 18.2%
Mitt Romney: 51 5.7%
Michele Bachmann: 29 3.3%
Rick Santorum: 4 0.4%
Jon Huntsman: 3 0.3%
Thad McCotter: 1 0.1%
http://www.smudailycampus.com/polopoly_fs/1.2576993!/image/2936477451.png
(http://www.smudailycampus.com/news/politics/ron-paul-finds-support-among-college-crowd-1.2576982#.TmpkTWofh_c)
It is worth noting that Ron Paul won by two votes in the first ballot count. Because of the close results, there was a recount, which produced the results above. Why the fact that the recount differed from the first count didn't trigger a second recount to confirm the first recount, I don't know, but a Ron Paul representative who observed the ballot counting does not believe there was any cheating.
Anyway, here is what the results would have been without the votes generated by the robocall tactic I describe below:
Hypothetical Straw Poll Results without Robocall
Herman Cain: 232 30.1%
Rick Perry: 179 23.2%
Newt Gingrich: 162 21.0%
Ron Paul: 109 14.2%
Mitt Romney: 51 6.6%
Michele Bachmann: 29 3.8%
Rick Santorum: 4 0.5%
Jon Huntsman: 3 0.4%
Thad McCotter: 1 0.1%
This would have still been a pretty decent result for Ron Paul in Georgia, considering that the only candidates to beat him would have been two Georgia natives (one of them being Newt Gingrich, the only candidate to address the crowd, and the other being talk radio star Herman Cain with campaign headquarters and a bus available for supporters in Atlanta) and the national flavor-of-the-month frontrunner.
The cost of 120 extra straw poll votes
Finishing in a virtual tie for first instead of 4th is cool and all, but how much did it cost? There are three parts to the cost: Robocalls, ticket purchases and volunteer phonebanking.
The total cost in robocalls was $1,428.18. That means identifying straw poll voters cost $11.90 each. (So theoretically, winning the straw poll would have cost an extra $48 in robocalls.)
There were roughly 200 ticket requests by robocall recipients (it's hard to give an exact figure because of the difficulty in counting probably guests and "maybes"). Because the GA GOP kept closing and re-opening online registration and warning that on-site ticket sales would be very limited on the day of the straw poll (at least if people wanted the fish and tee shirts that we were promising), we felt like we needed to pre-purchase a large percentage (aiming for 80%) of the anticipated tickets needed for Ron Paul supporters coming in response to our robocall. rp2012.org ended up pre-purchasing 120 tickets. However, I was continuing to receive ticket requests the night before the straw poll and early the next morning, so I asked our on-site organizer (XTreat) to purchase more tickets as early as possible. There were only 40 tickets left when the ticket office opened, so he bought all of them. According to XTreat, he got an extra 25 tickets from Ron Paul supporters (including 9 that rp2012.org purchased from Avaroth). At the end of the day, he had 65 tickets left over. This means that 120 + 40 + 25 - 65 = 120 tickets were claimed by Ron Paul supporters responding to the robocalls.
The cost of the 120 + 40 + 9 = 169 tickets purchased by rp2012.org for robocall recipients was $15 * 169 = $2,535.00. Adding in the robocall costs, that's a total of $3,963.18, or $33.03 per straw poll vote.
Finally, three of rp2012.org's best phonebankers spent a total of roughly 22 hours making follow-up phone calls to robocall recipients getting RSVPs from Ron Paul supporters.
Budget Overrun
A forum member donated $1,000 to rp2012.org to cover robocall costs. On the Thursday morning before the straw poll, I had $60 worth of calling credit left, so I started up my robocall to use it up, forgetting that I still had a $1,000 line of credit available that I requested for the day of the Iowa straw poll. My robocall ran all day until 9pm Eastern, leaving me with a negative balance $428.18 (fortunately telephone exchange bandwidth is extremely limited in central GA; otherwise I could have ended up with a much larger debt). The extra robocalls generated extra ticket requests, which lead to greater ticket expenses than rp2012.org planned.
I can't say that I regret my mistake, because without it, Ron Paul might not have beaten Rick Perry. We only expected about 500 to 700 votes (including ours), so part of our mistake was underestimating what it would take to win the straw poll, which was our goal. I also underestimated the percentage of no-shows (40%); as bad as that sounds, Jun, to his credit, was closer in his prediction of 50% no-shows. But a 40% no-show rate is close to what I've heard is typical of Ron Paul supporters at other straw polls, such as SRLC 2010.
Was it worth it?
Whether the results were worth the cost is up to those who donated to rp2012.org, but I lost a lot of sleep running the robocalls and coordinating with people in Georgia from Australia, which I think was very worthwhile, because in addition to some local coverage from Ron Paul's close 2nd in the straw poll, we gained some very valuable knowledge about winning straw polls in general. Namely, we learned:
1. Solid Ron Paul supporters can be identified for about $7 each, and actual straw poll voters can be identified for about $12 each using the technique described below. If the technique works this well in a state like Georgia where Ron Paul has been relatively weak, then it can work this well anywhere else there is a straw poll like California, Michigan, Illinois, DC, etc.
2. Only about 60% of those who ask for free straw poll tickets will actually attend and vote. This means that paying extra for on-site tickets as Ron Paul supporters show up is almost always preferable to pre-purchasing tickets based on RSVPs (though in the case of GA, we didn't really have a choice).
3. Winning straw polls for Ron Paul is just a matter of spending money on robocalls and phonebanking. I came nowhere near exhausting the phone numbers available within driving distance of Perry, GA. If we had wanted 1,000 votes for Ron Paul, we could have found them with $12,000 in robocalls and 25 volunteer phonebankers instead of 3.
The Straw Poll-Winning Technique
This technique is well-known to competing campaigns (and is mostly a no-brainer anyway), so I'm not worried about posting anything they don't know here. All they can do with the information anyway is wish that their candidate were as distinguished as the Good Doctor so that something similar could work for them.
1. Run a robocall that says: "Do you know who has been called the champion of the Constitution and the taxpayer's best friend? Hang up and send a text message with the correct answer to win a free ticket [and food, etc] to the ______ straw poll this Saturday!" The words "hang up" are important, because without them, a certain percentage of people (who I refer to affectionately as "boneheads") will attempt to start typing in Ron Paul's name while the message is still playing. Also, keep the details about the straw poll to a minimum and at the end of the message--we don't want to advertise the straw poll itself to the opposition.
2. When people reply with "Ron Paul", send a text message back as soon as possible, saying: "Congratulations, you win! To claim free straw poll tickets for you and any other Ron Paul supporters you bring, simply present this text message to the Ron Paul table at [time and location of straw poll] this Saturday. Please reply by text message ASAP with the number of tickets you will need."
3. As soon as possible, have phonebankers call the free ticket winners to (1) confirm that they got and understood the text message, (2) talk up the importance of the straw poll, (3) get them to RSVP for the straw poll and collect any contact details they're willing to give, (4) answer any questions about the straw poll that they might have, and (5) determine whether they are in fact a Ron Paul supporter. If they are not, they are welcome to come claim their free ticket, but emphasize that the additional free tickets for any guests they bring are only for Ron Paul supporters. In my experience, very few free tickets will be claimed by non-Ron Paul supporters.
4. Send additional text messages and make additional phone calls urging ticket winners to RSVP as needed.
5. Send additional text messages and make additional phone calls on the morning of the straw poll to remind Ron Paul-supporting ticket winners to come vote for Ron Paul. Give them a phone number to call in case they get lost at the venue and need help finding the Ron Paul table.
6. When the straw poll starts, have a few people at a Ron Paul table outside the straw poll with cell phones and preferably a laptop with wireless internet access. Provide them with multiple copies of the list of ticket winners (including those who didn't RSVP, in case they show up) and how many tickets they requested.
7. Buy tickets as needed and issue them to ticket winners and their guests, urging them to vote right away. When not busy, make calls to people who requested tickets but who haven't shown up. (Thank you to Xtreat and Avalon for doing this work in Georgia!)
8. Send text messages reminding people of when voting ends.
Using the same technique to grow your Meetup
This technique has only been tried in the context of a straw poll, but I would imagine that it could work to grow your Ron Paul Meetup as well. I think the key to getting text message responses is offering something free, which gets people attention. E.g., you could offer free meals at whatever restaurant your next Meetup is at. If anyone want to try this, send me a PM and I'll help you out.
Please donate to rp2012.org
We still need to pay for the Georgia straw poll near-victory (which would have been much easier, no doubt, if it had been an outright victory), so if you would like to help, you can follow the donate link at rp2012.org (which will take you John Dennis' Freedom & Prosperity PAC). I'll post updates in this thread with how much is still needed.
This post is a combination of a recap of the Georgia GOP straw poll on August 27, the sharing of a grassroots campaign tactic and a fundraising plea. I meant to post this right after the straw poll, but at the time I was bummed out over another narrow straw poll loss and just didn't get around to it until now. The results of the straw poll at the Georgia GOP's Annual Fish Fry on Saturday, August 27 were as follows:
Actual Straw Poll Results
Herman Cain: 232 26.1%
Ron Paul: 229 25.7%
Rick Perry: 179 20.1%
Newt Gingrich: 162 18.2%
Mitt Romney: 51 5.7%
Michele Bachmann: 29 3.3%
Rick Santorum: 4 0.4%
Jon Huntsman: 3 0.3%
Thad McCotter: 1 0.1%
http://www.smudailycampus.com/polopoly_fs/1.2576993!/image/2936477451.png
(http://www.smudailycampus.com/news/politics/ron-paul-finds-support-among-college-crowd-1.2576982#.TmpkTWofh_c)
It is worth noting that Ron Paul won by two votes in the first ballot count. Because of the close results, there was a recount, which produced the results above. Why the fact that the recount differed from the first count didn't trigger a second recount to confirm the first recount, I don't know, but a Ron Paul representative who observed the ballot counting does not believe there was any cheating.
Anyway, here is what the results would have been without the votes generated by the robocall tactic I describe below:
Hypothetical Straw Poll Results without Robocall
Herman Cain: 232 30.1%
Rick Perry: 179 23.2%
Newt Gingrich: 162 21.0%
Ron Paul: 109 14.2%
Mitt Romney: 51 6.6%
Michele Bachmann: 29 3.8%
Rick Santorum: 4 0.5%
Jon Huntsman: 3 0.4%
Thad McCotter: 1 0.1%
This would have still been a pretty decent result for Ron Paul in Georgia, considering that the only candidates to beat him would have been two Georgia natives (one of them being Newt Gingrich, the only candidate to address the crowd, and the other being talk radio star Herman Cain with campaign headquarters and a bus available for supporters in Atlanta) and the national flavor-of-the-month frontrunner.
The cost of 120 extra straw poll votes
Finishing in a virtual tie for first instead of 4th is cool and all, but how much did it cost? There are three parts to the cost: Robocalls, ticket purchases and volunteer phonebanking.
The total cost in robocalls was $1,428.18. That means identifying straw poll voters cost $11.90 each. (So theoretically, winning the straw poll would have cost an extra $48 in robocalls.)
There were roughly 200 ticket requests by robocall recipients (it's hard to give an exact figure because of the difficulty in counting probably guests and "maybes"). Because the GA GOP kept closing and re-opening online registration and warning that on-site ticket sales would be very limited on the day of the straw poll (at least if people wanted the fish and tee shirts that we were promising), we felt like we needed to pre-purchase a large percentage (aiming for 80%) of the anticipated tickets needed for Ron Paul supporters coming in response to our robocall. rp2012.org ended up pre-purchasing 120 tickets. However, I was continuing to receive ticket requests the night before the straw poll and early the next morning, so I asked our on-site organizer (XTreat) to purchase more tickets as early as possible. There were only 40 tickets left when the ticket office opened, so he bought all of them. According to XTreat, he got an extra 25 tickets from Ron Paul supporters (including 9 that rp2012.org purchased from Avaroth). At the end of the day, he had 65 tickets left over. This means that 120 + 40 + 25 - 65 = 120 tickets were claimed by Ron Paul supporters responding to the robocalls.
The cost of the 120 + 40 + 9 = 169 tickets purchased by rp2012.org for robocall recipients was $15 * 169 = $2,535.00. Adding in the robocall costs, that's a total of $3,963.18, or $33.03 per straw poll vote.
Finally, three of rp2012.org's best phonebankers spent a total of roughly 22 hours making follow-up phone calls to robocall recipients getting RSVPs from Ron Paul supporters.
Budget Overrun
A forum member donated $1,000 to rp2012.org to cover robocall costs. On the Thursday morning before the straw poll, I had $60 worth of calling credit left, so I started up my robocall to use it up, forgetting that I still had a $1,000 line of credit available that I requested for the day of the Iowa straw poll. My robocall ran all day until 9pm Eastern, leaving me with a negative balance $428.18 (fortunately telephone exchange bandwidth is extremely limited in central GA; otherwise I could have ended up with a much larger debt). The extra robocalls generated extra ticket requests, which lead to greater ticket expenses than rp2012.org planned.
I can't say that I regret my mistake, because without it, Ron Paul might not have beaten Rick Perry. We only expected about 500 to 700 votes (including ours), so part of our mistake was underestimating what it would take to win the straw poll, which was our goal. I also underestimated the percentage of no-shows (40%); as bad as that sounds, Jun, to his credit, was closer in his prediction of 50% no-shows. But a 40% no-show rate is close to what I've heard is typical of Ron Paul supporters at other straw polls, such as SRLC 2010.
Was it worth it?
Whether the results were worth the cost is up to those who donated to rp2012.org, but I lost a lot of sleep running the robocalls and coordinating with people in Georgia from Australia, which I think was very worthwhile, because in addition to some local coverage from Ron Paul's close 2nd in the straw poll, we gained some very valuable knowledge about winning straw polls in general. Namely, we learned:
1. Solid Ron Paul supporters can be identified for about $7 each, and actual straw poll voters can be identified for about $12 each using the technique described below. If the technique works this well in a state like Georgia where Ron Paul has been relatively weak, then it can work this well anywhere else there is a straw poll like California, Michigan, Illinois, DC, etc.
2. Only about 60% of those who ask for free straw poll tickets will actually attend and vote. This means that paying extra for on-site tickets as Ron Paul supporters show up is almost always preferable to pre-purchasing tickets based on RSVPs (though in the case of GA, we didn't really have a choice).
3. Winning straw polls for Ron Paul is just a matter of spending money on robocalls and phonebanking. I came nowhere near exhausting the phone numbers available within driving distance of Perry, GA. If we had wanted 1,000 votes for Ron Paul, we could have found them with $12,000 in robocalls and 25 volunteer phonebankers instead of 3.
The Straw Poll-Winning Technique
This technique is well-known to competing campaigns (and is mostly a no-brainer anyway), so I'm not worried about posting anything they don't know here. All they can do with the information anyway is wish that their candidate were as distinguished as the Good Doctor so that something similar could work for them.
1. Run a robocall that says: "Do you know who has been called the champion of the Constitution and the taxpayer's best friend? Hang up and send a text message with the correct answer to win a free ticket [and food, etc] to the ______ straw poll this Saturday!" The words "hang up" are important, because without them, a certain percentage of people (who I refer to affectionately as "boneheads") will attempt to start typing in Ron Paul's name while the message is still playing. Also, keep the details about the straw poll to a minimum and at the end of the message--we don't want to advertise the straw poll itself to the opposition.
2. When people reply with "Ron Paul", send a text message back as soon as possible, saying: "Congratulations, you win! To claim free straw poll tickets for you and any other Ron Paul supporters you bring, simply present this text message to the Ron Paul table at [time and location of straw poll] this Saturday. Please reply by text message ASAP with the number of tickets you will need."
3. As soon as possible, have phonebankers call the free ticket winners to (1) confirm that they got and understood the text message, (2) talk up the importance of the straw poll, (3) get them to RSVP for the straw poll and collect any contact details they're willing to give, (4) answer any questions about the straw poll that they might have, and (5) determine whether they are in fact a Ron Paul supporter. If they are not, they are welcome to come claim their free ticket, but emphasize that the additional free tickets for any guests they bring are only for Ron Paul supporters. In my experience, very few free tickets will be claimed by non-Ron Paul supporters.
4. Send additional text messages and make additional phone calls urging ticket winners to RSVP as needed.
5. Send additional text messages and make additional phone calls on the morning of the straw poll to remind Ron Paul-supporting ticket winners to come vote for Ron Paul. Give them a phone number to call in case they get lost at the venue and need help finding the Ron Paul table.
6. When the straw poll starts, have a few people at a Ron Paul table outside the straw poll with cell phones and preferably a laptop with wireless internet access. Provide them with multiple copies of the list of ticket winners (including those who didn't RSVP, in case they show up) and how many tickets they requested.
7. Buy tickets as needed and issue them to ticket winners and their guests, urging them to vote right away. When not busy, make calls to people who requested tickets but who haven't shown up. (Thank you to Xtreat and Avalon for doing this work in Georgia!)
8. Send text messages reminding people of when voting ends.
Using the same technique to grow your Meetup
This technique has only been tried in the context of a straw poll, but I would imagine that it could work to grow your Ron Paul Meetup as well. I think the key to getting text message responses is offering something free, which gets people attention. E.g., you could offer free meals at whatever restaurant your next Meetup is at. If anyone want to try this, send me a PM and I'll help you out.
Please donate to rp2012.org
We still need to pay for the Georgia straw poll near-victory (which would have been much easier, no doubt, if it had been an outright victory), so if you would like to help, you can follow the donate link at rp2012.org (which will take you John Dennis' Freedom & Prosperity PAC). I'll post updates in this thread with how much is still needed.