Unity08 has a stated goal of registering 10 million delegates by July 1, 2008 to participate in the world’s supposed first-ever online secure national presidential nomination. That’s just 420 days from now.
Since Unity08 delegate signups began in January of 2007, delegates have been a subset of users, since people can sign up to be Unity08 users with privileges to post on a message board, but decline to become a registered delegate. On the other hand, all people who sign up to be delegates are also registered as users. Therefore, the number of registered delegates (not the number of registered “delegates and supporters,” a higher but conveniently untrackable number often cited by Unity08 — see pages 105 to 106 of Douglas L. Bailey’s redacted lawsuit deposition) must be lower than the number of registered users. Despite this, Unity08 has been claiming a new number of over 50,000 delegates for some weeks now, and explicitly repeating the claim in interviews. The number that simply does not match its own measurable performance.
On the evening of March 20, 2007, the first time I checked, the highest registered user number on Unity08 was 25,100.
On the morning of March 29, 2007, 8.5 days later and the highest registered user number was 27,409.
On the morning of April 4, 2007, 6 days later, the highest registered user number was 29,360.
On the morning of April 11, 2007, 7 days later, the highest registered user number was 30,301.
On the morning of April 18, 2007, 7 days later, the highest registered user number was 30,611.
On the morning of April 25, 2007, 7 days later, the highest registered user number was 31,807.
On the morning of May 2, 2007, 7 days later, the highest registered user number was 34,945.
On the morning of May 8, 2007, 6 days later, the highest registered user number was 35,411.
Let’s be generous in our assumptions and imagine that each new user is also a new delegate. With that kind assumption, dividing the differences in user numbers by the days elapsed gives us the rate of delegate recruitment over time:
From 3/20/07 to 3/29/07: 272 new delegates per day.
From 3/29/07 to 4/4/07: 325 new delegates a day.
From 4/4/07 to 4/11/07: 134 new delegates a day.
From 4/12/07 to 4/18/07: 44 new delegates a day.
From 4/19/07 to 4/25/07: 171 new delegates a day.
From 4/26/07 to 5/2/07: 448 new delegates a day.
From 5/2/07 to 5/8/07: 78 new delegates a day.
This volatility shows the dependence of Unity08 on the use of special (dare we say elite?) access to mass media. The new recruitment record of two weeks ago showed the effects of an appearance in the Hollywood magazine Variety, an appearance before the National Press Club televised multiple times on CSpan, and a crotch-lick by Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post. But as soon as the media blitz goes away, recruitment goes away. This tells us that Unity08 recruitment is not a grassroots phenomenon, in which ordinary people are telling their friends, neighbors and coworkers about Unity08, creating a snowball recruitment effect that would be logarithmic. No, Unity08 recruitment comes from the same sort of phenomenon that drives people to purchase Crest Whitening Strips: corporate mass media public relations.
Even the spike in delegate recruitment of two weeks ago driven by the boob tube provided nowhere close to the recruitment rate Unity08 needs in order to meet its goal of 10,000,000 delegates by convention time. And the last week’s recruitment rate reflects a simply abysmal performance for a national organization of professional public relations executives.
At the latest recruitment rate of 78 delegates a day, Unity08 will add 32,760 more delegates by its nominating date of July 1, 2008 — about a third of the number of people who fill the seats at an Ohio State Football game every weekend in the fall. Even if we inaccurately assume that every current Unity08 user account represents a delegate, there are at the very most 35,411 current delegates. That means at the current rate, Unity08 would only muster a total of 68,171 delegates, a mere 0.07% of its declared goal of 10,000,000 nominating delegates.
As the weeks creep on with Unity08 managing only anemic delegate recruitment, the recruitment rate which Unity08 will need to muster to meet its goal continues to grow. If Unity08 is going to accomplish its goal of recruiting 10,000,000 nominating delegates, then beginning today and for the rest of this year and into the next, Unity08 will have to reach and sustain a recruitment rate of 23,647 delegates a day — a rate 303 times as high as this past week’s. Of course that won’t happen, so by next week the needed daily delegate recruitment rate will be even higher.
I imagine Unity08 isn’t including this information in its slick corporate press releases.
