The official Daily Kos Community Quilt, by Sara R and winglion, hanging at the office. The center piece is from the late Ben Masel's quilt.
Having written about the things that annoyed me, now it's time to write about the things that I loved about the community.
MattTX's series on the North Carolina early vote was the single most important elections resource for me the last two weeks of the election. It's one of the big reasons I tied Nate Silver for best pundit predictor this cycle.
I based my predictions on the assumption that pollsters were wrong about their likely voter screens. And the reasons I could do that was because MattTX showed that African Americans and young voters were turning out in large numbers in that early North Carolina vote. And if those guys were actually voting, then pollsters who claimed they wouldn't -- like Gallup and Rasmussen -- had to be wrong. And they were.
The Election Diary Rescue was a fantastic compilation of electoral-related diaries. I look incredibly forward to this feature during election season, and am always sad when it wraps up at the end. Sniff. I'll miss those guys. Until 2014.
You guys raised a total of $3.25 million this cycle. Holy fucking shit. The help we provided these guys were a big reasons we won so many of these targeted races.
The Rescue Rangers, for their work, in campaign season and out of it.
Everyone who wrote about their GOTV work, the rallies they attended, the people they talked to on streets ... I couldn't get enough on-the-ground reporting. I would lose hours a day (hours which I didn't have) just rooting around in those diaries. We need eyes on the ground.
I loved how people are really getting into sharing diaries on the social networks. I know lots of you hate Facebook or Twitter or whatever, but fact is, we grow as a movement by spreading our message where others might be receptive to it. Preaching to the choir is important. There's a reason churches exist. But so is evangelizing, which is how churches grow. So sharing on social networks is good for people who want their stuff read by a bigger audience, it's good for Daily Kos, and it's good for the movement. Keep it up!
Brainwrap's Rape Advisory Charts were brilliant.
Navajo's New Day series, encouraging Daily Kos readers all across America to come together and meet in meatspace.
I'm obviously super proud of the work the Daily Kos editors and featured writers did -- Chronicles of Mitt, War on Women, War on Voting, Steve's nightly poll roundups, the morning Abbreviated Pundit Roundups, our continuing coverage of the latest GOP ridiculousness, Jed's debate liveblogging, Daily Kos Elections, the comics (even the ones that annoyed people), and so on.
All of this and so much more have made Daily Kos the premier online destination when Important Shit Happens. We're not just a place to get information, but our own version of the corner bar -- where we all come together to discuss what's going on.
Just look our Election Day stats:
502,533 people
5,911,086 pageviews
37,480 comments
5,098 commenters
7.4 comments per commenter
202,693 comment recommendations
730 diaries
586 diarists
1.2 diaries per diarist.
22,025 diary recommendations
42K max concurrent visitors
That last line is our most ever, by a longshot. Yet the site ran smoothly the entire night. So props to the Daily Kos tech team for not just surviving Hurricane Sandy (our servers were in Manhattan and got knocked around a bunch), but Hurricane Election Night.
And in case you're wondering how Daily Kos has grown this year, the numbers are mind-boggling. Stratospheric, actually:
We had 1.8 million unique visitors in January 2012, and that was up for the GOP primaries. We had 2.3 million at the height of Occupy October in 2011. We're now over 4 million uniques and nearly 70 million pageviews over the last 30 days. Pretty amazing.
Next year will bring some incredible advances to the Daily Kos platform. We've spent the last year laying the technical foundations for the next-generation site. We've got one last revision to DK4, the current platform, then it's all-speed ahead toward DK5. And trust me like you've never trusted me before -- it's going to be mind-blowing awesome.
So congrats to everyone for an incredible year, and let's continue building this movement!