After his stellar debate performance, John Edwards' presidential bid is resurgent, and one of the reasons is his use of free media.
Case in point: YouTube.
Since Tuesday's debate, nearly 300,000 people have played his campaign's videos on YouTube.
By way of comparison, during that time just 150,000 people have played Clinton's and Obama's videos -- combined.
That's right -- two-thirds of post-debate YouTube video traffic has been to Edwards' videos.
Effective use of free media is incredibly important for Edwards, because his campaign does not have nearly as much money as Clinton and Obama. Combined, donors who have contributed at least $1,000 have given $96.5 million to Clinton and Obama -- and just $16.5 million to Edwards.
Despite his huge fundraising disadvantage, however, Edwards has built a solid campaign team capable of connecting with the people who matter: voters.
One way that Edwards has done this is through YouTube, posting 8 videos since Tuesday's debate. During that same time, Obama posted 10 videos and Clinton posted 2 videos.
Here's traffic stats for those videos, as of Saturday at 5pm:
Edwards - 291,184 videos viewed (66%)
Obama - 84,418 videos viewed (19%)
Clinton - 68,162 videos viewed (15%)
The five most popular videos:
- Edwards - 164,149 - The Politics of Parsing
- Edwards - 75,695 - John Edwards - Look your children in the eye tonight
- Clinton - 59,226 - The Politics of Pile On
- Edwards - 42,952 - John Edwards - "Heroes" Television Ad
- Obama - 20,394 - Barack Obama on Ellen
As an Edwards supporter, I am thrilled to see these numbers.
More importantly, as an American, I'm glad to see a political candidate do well even though he doesn't have the support of wealthy, high-dollar donors.
Presented for your enjoyment are Edwards' three top videos:
The Politics of Parsing:
Look your children in the eye tonight
"Heroes" television ad
Update:
I just noticed that The Politics of Parsing has received nearly 1,000 "favorites" and a rating of 4 stars, while The Politics of Pile On has received just 40 "favorites" and a rating of 2 stars.