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The new campaign

James Forsyth

Saturday, 19th April 2008

Ron Brownstein’s National Journal cover story on how the Obama and Clinton campaigns have harnessed technology to their advantage is fascinating and a reminder of what McCain will be up against in the fall. Just how far McCain lags behind on this front is emphasised by these numbers:

“Compared with either Democrat, McCain is in an even more challenging position. His campaign badly trails theirs on all gauges of networked activity—whether measured by his presence on social-networking sites, online views of his videos (about 3 million through early April, one-twelfth the number for Obama), or small-donor fundraising (just $7.4 million through February, a deficit of almost 15-to-1 when compared with the money Clinton and Obama have raised combined).”

The drawn out Democratic primary has definitely exposed some potential weaknesses in the Democratic nominee and the tensions from this fight will make it easier for McCain to pick up some voters from the Democrat who doesn’t get the nomination. But it has also meant that the Democratic campaigns—especially Obama’s—have built an infrastructure in pretty much every state. The McCain campaign—which is still not raising money at a particularly fast rate—is going to have to run to catch up. At the moment, experts expect that Obama might have as many as ten times as many volunteers as McCain.

What should give the McCain camp some encouragement is that their candidate and their campaign runs best as an under-dog. Indeed, the campaign’s decentralised structure is ideally suited to running a catch-up campaign. While on the money front, the Republican National Committee and outside groups—one run by a certain K. Rove—are stepping into the breach.

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TGF UKIP

April 20th, 2008 1:11pm

It's not just going to be the media stacked against McCain, it would seem, but the numbers too. Your piece here, James, comes after an article in last Saturday's (4 April) FT by Edward Luce. This provided narrative as well as statistical evidence of the recent years move away from the Republicans to the Democrats both in Pennsylvania (2002 3.8m Republicans and 3.2m Democrats reversed today to 4.2 to 3.2 in the Democrats favour) and nationally reversed to 41% Democrat affiliated to 32% Republican. We really should start praying that Old John can give the performance of his life between now and November with no more "senior moments."

Ian C

April 20th, 2008 8:17pm

Don't forget where McCain was last autumn, where he is now and if that change of fortunes were lines on a graph you would not bet against him. It will be a case of a solid know entity versus what exactly?