Bernie Sanders
Related: About this forumBernie Sanders' Internet Presence Leading the Charge
Published on Apr 11, 2016
According to campaign researchers, Bernie Sanders campaign success does not come from his 20,000 person support rallies, but from the intimate moments he shares with supporters in libraries, living rooms, and Internet char applications. Sanders also has an amazing strong presence on the Internet. Bernie Sanders supporters are constantly promoting him social media, and more and more people gain knowledge about the presidential candidate. They made over 47 million phone calls for him in April, surpassing Obama supporters during his campaign.
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/04/bernie-sanders-virtual-ground-game-221748#ixzz45XnrTQmB
Inside Bernie Sanders' vast, virtual ground game
His campaign has surpassed even Barack Obama's in turning online fans into an army of tens of thousands of volunteers.
By Nancy Scola
04/11/16 05:28 AM EDT
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2016/04/bernie-sanders-virtual-ground-game-221748#ixzz45XnrTQmB
Bernie Sanders campaign has been marked by the huge crowds turning out to his rallies, packing arenas with 20,000 people or more. But the key to his staying power in the 2016 race lies in more modest venues living rooms, libraries and Internet chat apps where his campaign turns the senator's online fans into a volunteer army that surpasses anything seen in presidential politics.
Barack Obama's successful campaigns in 2008 and 2012, for all their digital accomplishments, never fully achieved their ambition of converting online support into a volunteer force that could do the grunt work of cold-calling voters or knocking on doors.
But Sanders team has honing a strategy of turning "slacktivists" who don't normally engage in grass-roots politics into an advance team capable of doing everything from managing phone banks to planning high-level campaign events. As of early April, his tens of thousands of networked volunteers had made 47 million phone calls, putting them on track to surpass the calls made by Obamas operation during the entire 2012 election cycle.
Sanders organizational success fueled by free or low-cost, off-the-shelf apps like Hustle and Slack is the lesser-known counterpart to his campaigns prowess in raking in campaign cash from hordes of shallow-pocketed donors online. Experts in the evolution of technology in political campaigns say these innovations have helped Sanders put up a far more vigorous than expected challenge to Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton, including his 13-point win in Tuesdays Wisconsin primary and his 12-point victory Saturday in Wyoming.
"Sanders' team is investing a lot of time and energy into thinking how to do things differently, how to build a distributed operation that translates into dollars and volunteers," said Daniel Kreiss, a former political organizer who wrote the book Taking Our Country Back: The Crafting of Networked Politics from Howard Dean to Barack Obama.
While Obama's campaigns broke new ground in bridging the offline and online divide, "here the scale is different, the technology has changed, and every step along the way that creates greater scale, greater speed and lowers the cost of mobilizing a digital base in the service of electoral politics," said Kreiss, a media professor at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill.
On the money front, the signs of Sanders success are undeniable. In March, the campaign announced it had raised $44 million, about $15 million more than Clinton did that same month. Nearly all of Sanders' donations, about 97 percent, came in online, part of a push led by the D.C. firm Revolution Messaging.
Less well-known is Sanders' digital field organizing, a tactic that stretches those campaign dollars. Sanders' virtual volunteers do campaign work that has traditionally been handled by paid operatives or fallen through the cracks in a busy election cycle such as identifying likely voters or turning out people to campaign events.
The goal is to till the ground in primary and caucus states so that when Sanders' paid staffers arrive, they can devote their attention to voters who aren't yet sold on the 74-year-old democratic socialist.
"We've been able to engage people in voter contact no matter where they are in the world," said Claire Sandberg, the digital organizing director for the Sanders campaign and a former anti-fracking activist. The volunteers are running huge chunks of the campaign," said Zack Exley, a Sanders adviser and veteran of MoveOn.org and Howard Deans 2004 White House run.
Developing the model has been the product of trial and error. While email has raised millions of dollars, direct email solicitations largely failed to get supporters to donate their labor.
"We could email a million people who said they wanted to volunteer, and we would get just dozens actually making calls," said Exley.
They found, however, that email could fill seats at events known as "barnstorms," organizing rallies where Sanders' digital staffers update supporters on the campaigns strategy in cities across the country like Stockton, Calif., and Kansas City, Mo. And those in-person gatherings provided fertile ground for recruitment.
People who turn up for the barnstorms are asked to circle dates on paper sheets when they are willing to host neighbors at their home or, say, the local library, for a phone bank for Sanders. Completed forms are photographed, then uploaded online using Google's free Form tool.
Peace.
LT
rhett o rick
(55,981 posts)greed. Any truth to the rumor that the Clintons are shooting to be billionaires by 2024? They haven't really started to tap into the Foundation's millions.
libdem4life
(13,877 posts)I.e. name and message introduction.
Hillary must continue to go back for more. I'm going to take a wild guess that behind the scenes she is attempting to scare large donors into more and more funding above and beyond what was planned. Thus, no transcripts.
At what point do they begin to more closely consider these mega donations?
AikidoSoul
(2,150 posts)teach the Progressive Democrats or whatver we evolve into.... how to organize and do strategic planning. It has long been a serious defect of Dems. This new Bernie way of snergizing people could be the evolution/revolution that shows us how to use these new avenues to get Bernie's organization, and others like it, to the highest ground so we can cleanse our country's soul with polcies for the public good, that strive to make the entire world a better, peaceful place.
We should also spend a lot of time apologizing. It will be good for us.
draa
(975 posts)It's important that we don't focus too much energy on bashing Clinton. Instead we should promote Bernie and his vision and only go into the mud to compare and contrast the candidates and their record. If for no other reason than to not look like idiots (leave that to the other side).
Very important.
Peace.
LT