Recent reports indicate that Thompson is beefing up his virtual team of advisers. In fact, it seems that most of what Thompson is doing is virtual. The question in my mind is this: will Fred "Max Headroom" Thompson come out of his Internet box?

Early leaks to the blogosphere indicated that the Thompson campaign would be radically "different" relying on Internet efforts rather than "trudging through Iowa and New Hampshire". Yesterday, the Hotline reported a gambit of internet savvy Thompson-ites including Mike Turk, Jon Henke, and William Beutler. This is a very capable team.

However, this is one of the critical questions in political campaign history. Will a predominately virtual campaign make the same impact as pressing the flesh?

I remain convinced that it will not and cannot.

Take for instance two facts on the table here.

First, the reach of the blogosphere. Now obviously the Thompson campaign isn't limiting its efforts to the blogosphere but it's a good comparative sample data point to begin with.

If you look at the top 5 conservative blogs on the Internet (according the TTLB) and look at their average rate of "daily visits" you get the following:

Malkin - 105,000
Instapundit - 125,000
LGF - 195,000
Powerline - 58,000
Captain's Quarters - 29,000

Experience has shown that "Absolute Unique Visitors" (that is true warm bodies) is about a third of "daily visits". In other words, real advocates of specific blogs visit the blog about 3 times a day or more. Many times from different computers.

If we assume that 60% of these visitors are shared visitors (i.e. I visit Michelle and Powerline everyday myself) and factor in the 1/3rd calculation we get about 100,000 unique visitors.

Don't get me wrong... I think the blogosphere is the bomb! But it ain't the election bomb - yet.

One more stat. According to a recent survey from the Chronicle of Philantropy, the 20 largest charities are raising only 1% of their funds from online donations.

Now, these are not directly correlated to the Thompson campaign but neither are they anecdotal.

In short, I think Fred is one cycle too early. Relying heavily on an Internet-driven campaign won't win you the election in my mind, but it will be a great learning process.

Labels: Internet, Technology

From Hewitt:

"Romney's push-back at the YouTubing of his '94 debate with Ted Kennedy – happening in rapid response fashion – means an entire news cycle on a somewhat significant story has played out before even one newspaper reported it, with the anti-Romney forces (clearly worried about the big $ Monday and the DeMint Tuesday) trying to put a stick in the spokes, and Romney's team finding a way to knock it down in the same cycle. That's a preview of what it will be like all year."

From Barnett:

"You'll be saying it too by the end of the campaign – Romney is Smarter Than The Average Bear."

*****Update*****

Hedgehog has an interesting take on Romney's Media innovations:

In today's mail I had a very traditional package from John McCain-- you've seen them: A too-long letter auto-signed by McCain and enclosing a bunch of additional pages. No one will ever read past the first few lines of the letter and the extra pages will go into the trash unread.

My wife asked me: "Now, how many mailings like this have we gotten from Romney? And do you think we will get any?"

I say what actually stands out the most was that Romney took an other wise negative situation and quickly framed it into a discussion of how innovative he is. Most aren't talking about the content of the debate video, everyone is talking about how quick, nimble, articulate, innovative and Techy Mitt's campaign has become.

Labels: bear, hewitt, Technology