Greetings from another one of them dadgum liburl academics. Do you want to know how exactly the Netroots kick ass? Read on...
I came to Daily Kos in July, 2008 just in time for most of the community to head out to Netroots Nation. I missed the primary fight, the pie wars, and errinF's epic GBCW diary. What I did see was this community come together to elect a Democrat to the White House and large majorities in Congress.
But what exactly did we do? Join me across the electronic fold to find out.
You may or may not know it, but I am a graduate student in politics at one of the high-falutin' colleges in Washington, DC. I made it to Netroots Nation this year, helped in no small part by KagroX aka David Waldman. In Pittsburgh, I had the honor of meeting Prof. Matthew Kerbel, professor of political science at Villanova University. Prof. Kerbel wrote a great book called Netroots: Online Progressives and the Transformation of American Politics, which you should read.
This past semester, I took a PhD level class and the major assignment was to write a research paper and I decided to investigate this on-line phenomenon more carefully. I posed the following research question: What influence, if any, do the Netroots have on Congressional elections?
The short answer is that we do an incredible job of raising money but all of our yelling at the Inter-toobs does not translate into electoral victory. In short, get off your ass, change out of your pajamas, put away the Cheetos, and do some real campaign work in 2010.
Update: The paper was Titled "The 435 District Strategy: The role of the Internet in Congressional Campaigns."
Literature review
Both Kerbel and Kos, in Taking On the System, (buy it here) discussed Walter Ludwig's Project 90, which Jerome Armstrong ran with. Project 90 referred to 90 Congressional seats that the Democrats either failed to challenge or only put up a token challenge in 2004.
I also reviewed a paper called, "Between Pajamas and Pulitzers: Distributed Gatekeeping and the Potential of Blogs as News Media" by Adam J. Schiffer, professor of political science at TCU. (read it here) Schiffer found that progressive blogs allow users to show off their talent and features like the Rec List allow the best contributors to rise to the top. Sure, we get a lot of meta-whining on the rec list, but in general the best talent is promoted and this weeds out the crap from the gold. In short, the blogosphere is a place to get noticed. You probably won't become the next great pundit by grousing here but it is possible. On the other hand, how many times do we see Kos on TV? Now, if we could all pull together and buy him some neckties.
Methods
I parsed the study out into quantitative and qualitative sections. The qualitative section looked at all of you, the Netroots. The quantitative section looked at what you do in elections.
For the qualitative section of the paper, I surveyed the Daily Kos Community by posing the question: Why are you here?
Specifically I asked the following questions:
Have you contributed to campaigns on-line?
More importantly, have you contributed to Congressional races online?
Were the races in your home district or state or other parts of the country?
Most importantly, why do you/did you donate money? If not, is there any particular reason why you don't contribute?
Finally, why do you blog and/or post comments on line?
The results were striking. From my paper:
Of the 77 users who offered an opinion, 41 specifically said that they have donated to a candidate online. Of those 41, only one had not donated to a candidate for Congress and 35 specifically stated that they donated to candidates in other districts. Of the 36 who did not discuss their donations, eight offered non-substantive funny comments (akin to a “don’t know/don’t care” response) and eight others said they do not donate online. Of those non-donors, four are from different countries, one donates in other ways and one does not have the disposable income to donate. The remaining 20 did not discuss their donations, but offered other reasons for participating by reading, commenting and writing diaries.
The reasons for donating were nearly as varied as the commenters. Four mentioned specifically that they live in safe Democratic districts and would rather donate to candidates running elsewhere. Conversely, three stated that they live in heavily Republican districts where a Democrat is unlikely to win and would rather help Democrats win in other districts. Three stated that they donate online because the technology makes it so easy to donate small amounts. Three stated that they donate to candidates that reflect their own political concerns. Two female commenters stated that they donate to women candidates. Two others specifically stated that they want to support anyone challenging the very conservative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota.
Some of the individual quotes are particularly illuminating. Commenter Sciphile stated, “I really feel that our country is shrinking and congresspeople and Senators don’t just represent their districts anymore.” Another commenter, SallyCat, said, “I live in a safe Democratic district. If my campaign contribution can help get more and better Democrats elected I am happy to be a congressional ATM machine.” Another commenter, The Zipper added, “I donated money because I have bought into the hype (for good reason, I think) that when a bunch of small donors get together, we can make for some real influence.” Finally, Clem Yeobright said, “Gave $50 today. Someone had a diary up highlighting the fellow who will run against Pete Sessions next year and it was a good diary, so sure.”
~snip
The patterns for simply participating in the blogosphere are even clearer. Three factors clearly stood out in the comments: community/support (28 mentions), get information/learning (28 mentions), and activism/calls to action (18 mentions). In addition, four people said it is an outlet to vent or share opinions and four others just find it fun. Two people unapologetically cited vanity/ego as reasons for participating, though they made it clear that they were joking. Interestingly, eight people used some construction of the phrase, “I came for the politics and stayed for the community.” To further illustrate this point, there were 165 total comments in the diary that gathered these reactions. Quite a few of those comments were actually parts of conversations among Kossacks who interact in other discussion threads. Meanwhile, Whoknu observed, “Online media is becoming more influential and allows more people to participate in the conversation. I like that.”
The point seems to be that we do actively support progressive candidates for Congress. Moreover, we like each other, damn it. Remember that the next time you feel tempted to break out the falme throwers and get into an old-fashioned meta war.
As for the quantitative study, I looked at patterns of online donations and election results vis-a-vis mentions on Daily Kos. I hypothesized that more mentions on Daily Kos resulted in more donations via ActBlue. I then hypothesized that those two variables -- mentions and donations -- lead to improvements in performance at the ballot box.
I found evidence to support the first hypothesis, but not the second, hence my earlier admonition to get the hell out there and campaign.
My sample size was 42 House races that Kerbel identified as having no Democratic challenger in 2004. Democrats did challenge all but three of these races in either or both 2006 and 2008. However, the Democrats only hold four of those seats. Two are held by Blue Dogs and one is a D+3 on the Cook PVI. (These four Representatives are Chris Carney in PA-10, Dan Maffei in NY-25, Travis Childers in MS-01, and Suzanne Kosmas in FL-24. Carney and Childers are members of the Blue Dog Caucus.) Since the Dems had so few winners, I operationalized electoral performance by calculating the improvement in percentage of votes between 2006 and 2008 regardless of whether or not it was the same Democrat running both years.
The problem with this sample is that it probably understates the influence of the Netroots since these were not races that were on most people's radars. Only Maffei's district trends Democratic and the average PVI of those seats is R +13.2
The interesting part is that we did not give up on those districts. ActBlue archives the fundraising of individual candidates in previous elections. I was able to compile that data for 2008 and found that these candidates raised almost $1.5 million on ActBlue. Almost $600,000 of that went to Bob Lord in Arizona. I should also point out that many of our top tier ActBlue candidates won their races in 2008.
I should also point out that Armstrong's agitating about Project 90 seemed to have paid off, though I can't find any evidence that candidates were recruited primarily due to online efforts. Democrats challenged all but 10 seats in 2006 and all but 14 in 2008. This is likely a result of the very good electoral environment for Democrats rather than any online recruiting effort.
Finally, I looked up how many times a candidate had been mentioned on Daily Kos during the election season. On a meta note: I wish you all would use people's full names in the tags. It would have made my research easier.
Results
I ran an ordinary least squares regression (OLS) analysis using SPSS software. (Why? Because my school has it.) Here are the results:
There is a statistically significant relationship between DKos mentions and online donations. The analysis of my sample indicated that a single mention of a candidate on Daily Kos was good for 17.2 donations totaling $995.75 for an average donation of $58.75.
I added a dummy variable to indicate that a candidate or a volunteer for a campaign posted on Daily Kos. There was no significant relationship. However, logically it stands to reason that we will respond favorably to candidates who post here like Darcy Burner, Alan Grayson, and Kirsten Gillibrand. In other words, go ahead and contribute if you are running for Congress. It might not help but it could and it won't hurt (unless you act like a troll, of course).
I then ran the regression analysis comparing donations, donors, and mentions against electoral performance. None came close to statistical significance and the only one that came close was mentions on Daily Kos. Furthermore, I think there is an endogeneity problem as candidates will likely be mentioned more often as they are perceived as more likely to win (or at least not lose too badly).
Discussion
The evidence is pretty clear. The Netroots are emerging as an important coalition within the Democratic party. We are politically knowledgeable and we reliably vote for the most progressive candidates. We are not shy about expressing our opinions, even when they are wrong. Sometimes we even get noticed by the media for our work. For example, it was progressive bloggers over at Talking Points Memo who broke the story about the systematic firings of those attorneys general.
We do an amazing job of raising funds. Remember what we did for Rob Miller in South Carolina. And how about Alan Grayson? Don't forget, there are 433 other races going on just for the House. How much can you give?
On the other hand, all of your yelling on the blogs will not necessarily translate to votes. If you really care about building solid Democratic majorities in the House and Senate and in your towns and cities, then go out and volunteer for campaigns. Make calls. Canvass. Use your talents and write letters to the editor. GOTV. Most campaigns would be happy to have the help.
One more thing
I can't end this without adding my favorite part of the study. Have you ever wondered why bloggers are regarded as Cheetos-munching, pajama-wearing idiots. Here's your answer:
The less flattering view of bloggers is the stereotype is of a person wearing pajamas, eating Cheetos, and blogging from his or her mother’s basement. The pajamas part of the stereotype came from then CBS News executive Jonathan Klein. It was conservative bloggers, particularly those on Little Green Footballs, who called into question documents that Dan Rather used in 2004 to raise doubts about George W. Bush’s service in the Air National Guard during the Vietnam era. Klein said, “These bloggers have no checks and balances... You couldn't have a starker contrast between the multiple layers of checks and balances [at 60 Minutes] and a guy sitting in his living room in his pajamas writing”).
The Cheetos part of the stereotype came during the 2008 election from conservative MSNBC pundit and former Congressman from Florida Joe Scarborough. He said, “What is so funny about this is people are just sitting there, eating their Cheetos — ‘Let me Google Anbar Awakening’!” and just a second later added, “Dust flying — Cheeto dust flying all over. They’re wiping it on their bare chest while their underwear — you know, their Hanes”. Things like this have a way of going viral on the internet and bloggers often use such insults as ironic self-depreciating humor.
Note: Academic citations replaced with hot links.
And you all thought you were a bunch of ineffectual little nothings, didn't you.
Update: Thanks for all the feedback. Sadly, I have to run out for a few hours. I'll be back to drop more mojo later.