Is there a correlation between fundraising numbers and site traffic for that month. In a world where candidates increasingly use online methods of raising money, the results prove interesting...
There is a lot of buzz form various sources about how Google may be able to show how a candidate may perform in a given election. With that in mind I turned my attention to Alexa, a website that indexes and ranks the performance of a website based on various methods.
The result is a a graph of a traffics spikes and lulls. The spikes in barackobama.com's site traffic and hillaryclinton.com's site traffic strongly match up with fundraising numbers.
Here is the graph with fundraising totals for Obama and Clinton marked at the top and bottom of each sectioned month respectively:
By zotnix
As seen, I made predictions for May fundraising totals which we should see shortly this month.
Barack Obama's site has always had more traffic than Hillary Clinton's. This is a testament to his more netroots-centric website and organization. His grassroots support has always been stronger and more genuine as well.
If you notice his numbers have been falling since his record haul in February and that is clearly visible with his site traffic. That month he raised $55 million and around Super Tuesday we notice a huge spike in traffic. It is easily the largest surge of traffic in his site's history.
This graph does raise some interesting points and potential weaknesses in Obama's fundraising abilities.
1.) His site traffic and subsequently his donations increased around major primary events. Super Tuesday and "Mini Super Tuesday" are easily viewed on the graph, and these spikes helped him gain the most money.
2.) April was a quiet month until the end. We notice a deep lull in his site traffic. There are no major events taking place. As we notice, this is reflected in his fundraising... he only raised $31 million dollars.
So what we may see is that without any contests to boost his fundraising numbers Obama is going to have to switch into relying more on traditional methods of fundraising. That said, I don't think his online donations will completely die out. He has a vast well he can tap into again and again.
The big question at this point is if he can maintain excitement without monthly primaries to boost donations. I think with carefully planned events and large speeches, he may be able to do this to some degree.
Based on past performance and the apparent correlation between fundraising numbers and site traffic, for May I forsee:
Obama: $36 million
Clinton: $25 million
Both did slightly better in May as there were more primaries to boost some excitement for these candidates.
You also get a sneak preview of June... and it looks like Obama is heading into a good month for fundraising and will really blow McCain out of the park.
By zotnix