Inside Romney's Fundraising
An interesting perspective from Michael Turk, former eCampaign director for the RNC, as posted to his Facebook account:
The Politico's Jonathan Martin posts a breakdown of Mitt's numbers, as claimed by the campaign. If you look beyond the claim, the numbers just don't add up.
Total Raised for the quarter: $23, 434, 634Total Disbursements: $11, 570, 981
Money Raised Online: $7, 206, 216
Total Donors: 32,074
Itemized ($200+) donors: 12,236 (38%)
Non-itemized donors: 19,838 (62%)
The Hotline breaks that online number down further.
$3,365,625.59 in pure and simple website fundraising, and$3,840,591.00 raised through Quick ComMitt, our online fundraising pledge entry tool
The average online gift for both the Bush campaign and the Kerry campaign (and most of this year's contenders) has been in the range of about $100, but let's be generous and say that could go as high as $150. That puts the number of online donors at somewhere between 22,430 and 33,656 donors. We know it wasn't 33,656 because he only has 32,074 total donors. If we assume it was 22,430 people giving an average of $150, that means the remaining 9,644 made an average gift of $2,081.If 19,838 people gave him less than $200 (let's assume it was $1 less for purposes of giving him the benefit of the doubt), that would preclude the 22,430 $150 donations. That also means a maximum of $3,947,762 out of $23 million consisted of small dollar donations.
If you assume the overwhelming majority of of the $3,365,625 in "pure and simple" online fundraising was small dollar donations (which you have to because it takes a lot of $25 contributions to balance $2,300 to get a $100 average), Romney would have to have the most successful Internet fundraising effort ever run by anyone (including Democrats), together with the worst direct mail and telemarketing campaign in the history of politics. (Telemarketing and direct mail donors are typically small dollar gifts) There is no way that number represents "pure and simple" website giving. The math just doesn't support the claim.
The campaign is using SiteCatalyst to track it's web traffic. If they really want me to buy that number, they're going to have to show me the unique visitor report that supports their online claims. On the Bush campaign, the ratio of unique visitors to donations worked out to about 100 to 1. From our calculations, Kerry was probably around the same.
If for every 100 visitors, you receive one online contribution. To generate the 22,430 donations, they would have to have a minimum of 22,430,000 visitors through their site in the last 90 days. That works out to about 250,000 unique visitors per day. Given their Alexa rank of 101,590, I also don't see that they have the traffic to sustain their numbers.
Some other numbers to keep in mind:
Obama, 50,000 online donors, $6.9 millionEdwards, 30,000 online donors, over $3 million online
Clinton, probably around 30,000 online donors, $4.2 million online
Romney, with a number of total donors that is on par with or less than the "online donors" of the three Democrats raised more than all of them online? I doubt it.More likely, the campaign is driving their large donors and event attendees to give via credit card on the website in order to pad the online number. They could still claim that as "website fundraising" and keep it and the COMMitt fundraising separate. It's likely that the average gift was astronomically high, meaning there is almost no chance this is a "grassroots outpouring" in favor of Romney. (which is confirmed by the very skewed ratio of donors to dollars raised)
This is a large dollar candidate, not an Internet candidate. No matter how you cook the books, Mitt, that dog doesn't hunt, either.
You can't say the numbers "don't add up" and base it on your assumptions! Apparently, your assumptions are what doesn't add up.
Thanks for your mathematical prowess J. Martin.
Now you can go and help Fred Thompson with his math problem right now.
Romney has never told plain and simple truth. So there is absolutely no reason to believe what he is claiming about his fundraising. Romney always has a fine print about everything that he says. Thats why he is known as Multiple Choice Mitt or a flipflopper.
Where is the story here? Romney's numbers look nearly indentical to John Edwards and yet we don't get this kind of analysis.
Get real. Your attempt to cast doubt on Mitt Romney's numbers uses a tremendous amount of speculation. (If you were a scientist proposing a hypothesis, people would laugh you out of the room.) For example, you assume that no more than 1 out of 100 people who visited Mitt's web site donated money based on a comparison to past campaigns by other, much better known, candidates. Mitt has not been well know nationally till this point, thus it would stand to reason that a higher percentage of people who visit his site would already know a fair amount about him - and possibly already like what they see. If that is the case, then these people would be much more likely to give a donation.
I personally sent out emails to twenty friends inviting them to visit Mitts site and donate. I don't know how many actually went to the website, but I do know that three of them donated money. A much higher percentage than 1 out of a hundred.
Instead of doubting the ratios, try to learn something. Mormons don't waste their disposable income on booze. They are very generous. The average middle class Mormon is more prosperous than the average American. They are better organized than you imagine. They can gather a quorum of any size needed on very short notice. They are not afraid to commit to a cause they believe in. Outside of Utah most Mormons have a circle of friends that are not Mormon. Prepare to be amazed.
You wrote: "If for every 100 visitors, you receive one online contribution. To generate the 22,430 donations, they would have to have a minimum of 22,430,000 visitors through their site in the last 90 days. That works out to about 250,000 unique visitors per day."
Your math on web traffic is off by a factor of ten. They would only need 2,243,000 visitors, or 25,000 per day.
Maybe I'm not understanding a few things correctly, but it sounds as though Turk's conclusions are based on some assumptions that may be faulty. For example, Turk assumes it's impossible for Romney to have run the most successful Internet campaign of all time and that therefore something fishy is afoot. But bear in mind this is '07, the last campaign was in '03 (eons ago in Internet time), and the Internet didn't perform a substantive function in the previous election cycle. The populace in general is much more Internet-savvy today than they were four years ago. In addition, Internet marketers are much better at their jobs and have learned a lot from what was successful/unsuccessful in the '04 race. It should therefore be probable, rather than inprobable, that a candidate's campaign today would be much more effective than that of a candidate four years ago. If Turk wants to make comparisons, it would be better to make comparisons to other candidates running in this race as opposed to those who ran in the last election under substantially different circumstances.
22,430 x 100 = 2,243,000. Not 22.243 million.
I agree with his main point, though. I cannot see any grassroots enthusiasm for Romney whatsoever. Pushing big donations through his site to try to fool people that this is a grassroots outpouring would be classic Romney.
Welike the website but itsnot