Disclaimer: As you can see from my previous diary entries, I am volunteering for Barack Obama's presidential campaign, so I am not an unbiased observer. This diary is in part a request for information from those who are more engaged in the other campaigns.
I've been talking with a variety of people about grassroots politics and grassroots support for various politicians, and have been wondering for a while if I could find any quantifiable evidence supporting my anecdote-driven belief that Barack Obama has dramatically more grassroots support than any of the other presidential candidates.
This has been brewing for a while, without coming up with a solution, but just today I think I may have stumbled across something...
While reading through some of Hillary's positions on her website, I noticed that she had a link to 'find an event', something I am very familiar with from the similar links at my.barackobama.com. Clicking through, I see that 'Both volunteer-hosted and official campaign events from all over the state are listed', also similar to the mechanism on my.barackobama.com. I could not find a similar link on johnedwards.com.
So I thought I'd try this. I live in Palo Alto, in the heart of Silicon Valley, one of the hotbeds of Democratic support in the nation. So I entered my zipcode (94306 if you want to repeat this experiment) and looked for events within 20 miles of me.
On www.hillaryclinton.com, only one event showed up: A debate watching party scheduled for 12/10. Okay, perhaps I was too restrictive. I searched again for events within 100 miles of me. This time I got more: 8 events showed up, covering dates from 11/30 to 01/31.
Allow me to contrast this to searching on my.barackobama.com: within 20 miles, I see 9 events scheduled between now and December 3rd. Within 100 miles: 47 events.
Is this a coincidence for my area? Lets try within 100 miles of a few more zipcodes.
Los Vegas, Nevada (89101): www.hillaryclinton.com 0, my.barackobama.com 4
Columbia, South Carolina (29201): www.hillary.com 1, my.barackobama.com 12
Des Moines, Iowa (50302): www.hillary.com 4, my.barackobama.com 19
Go for it, try your own zipcodes. I'd love to hear other people's stories about the relative support in the grassroots for these various candidates. I'd also be interested in other ideas for quantifying grassroots support.
Also, if you are an Edwards supporter or know the Edwards resources, please point me to a similar service for him. I'm not deliberately excluding him, I just couldn't find a resource letting me look for events in particular areas on his website.