What’s the Online Universe?
by Patrick Ruffini :: June 7th, 2007 11:11 pmMyManMitt’s Justin Hart and the Eye are engaged in a debate over whether Fred Thompson (or a candidate like him) can win using the Internet.
As a Mitt guy, Justin says no. Soren Dayton says, “Let’s see.” As Soren points out, this is not either-or. You need both.
But I differ pretty sharply with Justin about the size and nature of the audience. He argues:
If you look at the top 5 conservative blogs on the Internet (according the TTLB) and look at their average rate of “daily visits” you get the following:
[Unique audience size of top 5 conservative blogs; maximum of 195,000]
Experience has shown that “Absolute Unique Visitors” (that is true warm bodies) is about a third of “daily visits”. In other words, real advocates of specific blogs visit the blog about 3 times a day or more. Many times from different computers.
If we assume that 60% of these visitors are shared visitors (i.e. I visit Michelle and Powerline everyday myself) and factor in the 1/3rd calculation we get about 100,000 unique visitors.
Every blogger should do themselves a favor and run Google Analytics. Besides being an awesome tool, it tells you exactly how many “warm bodies” (”Absolute Unique Visitors”) you’ve got coming through your site in any given period. At this writing, PatrickRuffini.com has had 49,987 since January 1st. I generally get fewer than 1,000 visits a day. By Justin’s reckoning, that “warm bodies” number should be closer to 300.
Your best advocates are balanced out by the folks who’ll visit you once every three days, or those coming in via a random Google search or an Instalanche. Not everyone is like us, with 100 or more RSS feeds in our reader.
Add to this the huge non-blog conservative Web audience, which probably outstrips blog types by 2 or 3 to 1. I’m talking about the people who visit Free Republic and Townhall (where the pageview and commenting action is mostly found on columns, not blogs). I studied this extensively when I was at the RNC using Nielsen data, and the unduplicated audience on the top 3 or 4 conservative sites was consistently around 5 million. And for liberals it was 3 million; they’re just more concentrated on the blogs.
How much weight does an audience of 5 million carry? In a primary voting universe of 15-20 million, where most people are swing voters, a lot. And when you consider they’re the opinion leaders, that’s even bigger.
I think something is being lost here, and that is that there is no real distinction anymore between an online activist and an offline activist. There are just activists whose candidate preferences are roughly similar. The largest email list on the right is one you almost never hear about, but they carry about the same “juice” as MoveOn.org: the American Family Association. They’re the Evangelical base, and you’ll rarely see them hanging out on blogs or doing early adopter things. They surveyed their list about ‘08. Over 80,000 voted. And:
Fred Thompson 37.7%
Newt Gingrich 15.1%
Mitt Romney 12.3%
Rudy Giuliani 9.2%
John McCain 7.7%
That’s not at all dissimilar from the Pajamas Media or GOP Bloggers polls, in that Fred gets nearly 40%. Nor is it different than many of the straw polls at the local level. Opinion amongst the “activist wing” online and off is pretty consistent. And online is increasingly the news medium of choice for the activist wing. The debates got 2-3 million viewers yet everyone in the blogosphere is obsessing over them. As such, it follows that a large percentage of people who care enough to tune into the debates are getting their fixes online. In the early states, I bet it’s even higher.
Now, maybe they’re not all going to read Eye on ‘08, MyManMitt, or Race42008. But they are reading Drudge or AOL News. Which are carrying wire copy that has been shaped and influenced by the likes of Ambinder, Martin, and Smith. Who in turn read obscure blogs like ours to get their fixes.
If activists matter, and not all still just TV ads and mail pieces, then the inescapable conclusion is that online matters. Because the activists are increasingly going online to engage. (Indeed, if you’re not in Iowa or New Hampshire or South Carolina, there is no other way to engage.) That makes it a great place to shape the narrative, collect money, and mobilize the people who volunteer.
UPDATE: Doesn’t this kind of illustrate the point of a unified activist base, online and off? The blog narrative figures prominently in this Romney town hall meeting in New Hampshire:
(From the Videowall.)
Tagged: fred thompson 
online politics
Comments (1) 
Trackbacks (1) 
del.icio.us 
digg it 
subscribe
Both comments and pings are currently closed.
I think you make some great points. But (I understand it’s merely anecdotal) what makes me inclined to agree with Justin, is of the people I know in person very few are online following the blogs.
Be that as it may, as a blogger I would like to think what I am doing is a having a huge impact, but when few people I know go to Politico or Ambinders blogs (I mean maybe less than 5%) I can’t see how a campaign bent more on internet contact rather than person to person is the best strategically. Not to mention I think any person would rather meet the candidate in person then watch a YouTube clip, and a candidate who is still accessible will no doubt create a buzz.
But Thompson is no fool either, the juries out and we will have the answer come Feb of 08.
[…] Patrick Ruffini :: What’s the Online Universe? (tags: manifesto) […]