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July 18, 2007

But is he really doing better?

I was reading the article Obama’s Camp Cultivates Crop in Small Donors and learning about the metrics (beyond polls) by which nascent campaigns are measured.

In it, I learned that the Obama campaign was counting tickets and candidate souvenirs as donations to the campaign. Normally this would be just an accounting gimmick, as it superficially appears to give no additional revenue. However, it has juiced the amount of apparent money he has raised (generating additional press) and given him a large list of small donors that could turn into future donors.

This seems like a classic example of "what is measured moves", where something of little or no practical interest (the amount of money raised by the candidate from donations) serves as a proxy for the object of interest (the heath and potential of a campaign), and at first it serves as a good proxy. But eventually someone discovers that it is easier to move the proxy than it is the underlying fact, and so the connection breaks down. But, in something like a presidential campaign, maybe appearances are reality, maybe seeming to be successful long enough is all you need to win the nomination. Certainly, it is a kiss of death to seem as if you had no chance of winning the nomination.

My direct democracy estimates this as getting Obama an additional 60k donors on his books, but echoes the same general theme, that this a victory by the strict metric, but not a good indicator of campaign health.

Posted by OneEyedMan at July 18, 2007 8:26 PM

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