[LINK] Political fundraising

[stephen at melbpc.org.au]

Can the GOP Compete with ActBlue?

<http://www.actblue.com/>

<http://www.rightroots.com/>

<http://www.bigredtent.org/>

<http://www.slatecard.com/>


 In 2004 Democrats established an online donation avenue, Act Blue, to 
channel contributions from donors to the candidates of their choice.

Since its conception Act Blue has raised 26.2 million dollars online and 
has earned a reputation for being a great asset to Democratic fundraising.

In the first half of 2007 Democrats collectively raised a total of 44.3 
million dollars more than Republicans. Online contributions have played a 
big part in this gap.

In response to the Democrats impressive fundraising Republicans are 
reacting competitively by establishing their own online contribution 
channels. 

Rightroots, Big Red Tent and Slatecard.com have all emerged as new ways to 
connect Republicans to their candidates. 

Rightroots at present is a donations avenue featuring news, information 
and links to a number of Republican candidates and conservative issues. 

Big Red Tent takes an active approach by allowing participants to nominate 
their candidates by providing support and feedback through a process they 
call stumping and voting. This narrows the number of candidates featured 
but allows everyone an opportunity to not only financially support their 
candidate but also provide a reason as to why. 

Slatecard.com is not up and running yet but will allow members to develop 
their own portfolios of candidates by "tagging" them with facts that will 
help to simplify the understanding on where candidates stand on a number 
of issues. This will be effective due to the fact that you can share these 
portfolios with other online networks like MySpace and Facebook.

As the campaigns progress and the election nears it will be interesting to 
see the fundraising competition continue and see if this new approach 
succeeds for the Republicans in a realm dominated thus far by the 
Democrats. <http://www.politicsonline.com/>
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Also, now, there's a "quantitative metric to measure the Internet-wide 
performance of each Presidential candidate" (Obama is thrashing Hilary)

<http://www.spartaninternet.com/2008/>

"The Spartan Internet Political Performance (SIPP) Index is the first 
quantitative metric to measure the Internet-wide performance of each 
Presidential candidate for the 2008 election."

"The Spartan Internet Political Performance (SIPP) Index utilizes 650 
quantitative factors focused on accurately determining the level of 
interest a candidate is generating across the Internet. Each of the 
factors is derived from numeric values across the Internet such as social 
network outreach, Web site traffic, blog presence and search engine 
utilization. The resulting score is indicative of each candidate's overall 
ability to reach individuals online and connect on key issues."

News

2008 Presidential Election Internet Performance Index - August 23rd Results
08-23-07 - Spartan Internet Consulting has released the first SIPP index 
results for the week of August 16th- 22nd, with Barack Obama ranked 
highest for the week with a score of 21.29 percent. The most notable 
gainers included John Edwards and Dennis Kucinich with increases of 0.43 
percent and 0.37 percent, respectively.  
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Cheers, people
Stephen Loosley
Victoria, Australia