Um…
Great news, obviously, and great work by the campaign staff. Still, a couple of things about this are bothering me.
-1. That number in the cents column keeps changing, over and over again. I mentioned in an earlier post that it struck me as odd that anybody would write a check that included an extra couple of nickels and pennies. Now, though, it seems like almost ALL the donations include figures in the cents column–check the moment-to-moment updates and see if I’m not right.
Is this an exact figure, or some sort of approximation? Because, if it’s the latter, that’s fine; I’d just hope they’d make that clear. Hell, maybe there’s some guy doing laps around the campaign office on a segway, throwing change in the basket like some motorist on an Illinois toll road. I dunno. But it’s weird.
-2. That $10,000 an hour thing that several sites have been mentioning? It’s gotten to be…well, sorta scary-regular. Like…at all hours of the night, $10,000 an hour. Never a whole lot more, never a whole lot less, never much variation.
Again, um, ya know…
-3. At some point in the last 24 hours, we lost a day on the “end of the quarter” counter. As of this morning, we had most of two days; now, we have a few scant hours. The reality, contrary to what’s on the counter at present, is that we still have a day and a few extra hours. Surely they’re not trying to deliberately mislead their supporters in order to mount TWO last-minute pushes, one tonight and one tomorrow?
I’m just saying, is all.
And now, time to don my flame-retardant apparel…
Sorry, I was going to add this the last time you brought up 1, but forgot.
It’s not an uncommon thing, in online activist circles, to append a cents figure to the end of your donation to mark is as coming from somewhere. For instance, Meetup Group 81 might add 81 cents to the end of each of their donations, to “represent”.
Dailykos used to do this when they’d raise for a candidate. They’d ask each person they drove through the fundraising door to add a penny to their donation, so the campaign knew where it came from (in that instance it was more flexing muscles so people could see they had fundraising force; in this case it’s probably more just a very small thing that some small groups got it in their head to do). It’s not convention per se, but enough people do it that when you’re fundraising these kinds of numbers online, the cents figure changes. I bet if you were to look at the books and see donation-by-donation, it’s not just random cents being added, but 50 contributions ending in 81 cents, 25 with 79, etc etc.
Comment by Brad — 9/29/2007 @ 8:22 pm
1) The countdown clock seemed to have a but in in for about an hour, but it seems to be right now.
2) I think their system might be overloaded a bit–I tried to get on it about 20 minutes ago, and got error messages. The counter doesn’t seem to be so much “real time, anymore.
3) As to the “cents”, I’ve wondered about that, too, but wonder if it doesn’t have to do with the “store”–those numbers count as donations (you have to fill out all the usual donation forms), but I wonder if they have to charge sales tax, and thus that amount gets excluded from the total “donated” by the purchase of merchandise. Just a thought, but it’s the best I could come up with.
Comment by Laura — 9/29/2007 @ 8:25 pm
Oh, and I have no idea on the other stuff, but aren’t really the slighted bit bothered. Maybe their technology is such that it’s not plugged right into their bank account, but is updated in chunks as they do their books (i.e. add up donations for an hour, update the widget). Or, it could really just be that the donations are pretty constant.
No clue on the timeline thing. They could be parsing down the time to get more urgency into it, which wouldn’t be strictly speaking 100% honest, but again, not an uncommon (or ineffective) fundraising tactic). Or they could be working off their own internal timeline (they have to report at some point, probably before 11:59 PM Sunday). Who knows. I wouldn’t read too much into it either way.
Comment by Brad — 9/29/2007 @ 8:28 pm
I hope you’re right, Brad, and the explanations do help to explain a lot of it. But we are independent journalistic observers, as well as Paul fans, so I thought it was worth mentioning.
Comment by Rojas — 9/29/2007 @ 8:39 pm
$970,000 with three (or possibly 27) hours left.
Comment by Rojas — 9/29/2007 @ 8:42 pm
$982,000, and the extra day just reappeared on the counter. Glad to see that my fears were unjustified on that count.
On to one million.
Comment by Rojas — 9/29/2007 @ 9:34 pm
And there’s the million, at 9:35 CST.
One million in SIX DAYS. Staggering.
So…we know, based on what they told us at the beginning of the drive about exceeding the previous quarter, that they’re over 3.5 million for the period. How FAR over, we’re likely to learn next week. My guess: not much. But $3.5 million is, frankly, gobsmacking for a candidacy of this sort.
I think we’re going to beat McCain head-to-head this time, rather than just in terms of cash on hand. I am SURE we’ll beat Thompson. We’re talking about third place among Republican candidates and sixth overall.
I won’t say “now the media CAN’T ignore us!” because, clearly, they can and will. But now we can buy our OWN media. :)
Comment by Rojas — 9/29/2007 @ 10:47 pm
I’ve been watching the progress on a chart at the following site.
http://www.ohcalvary.org/rp.php
It certainly shows a very believable contour. Fun thing is it’s about straight up, still, after hitting the 1 mill.
As for the cents thing – I myself emptied out my Paypal account to donate a few days ago, and that included an odd number of cents. I think there are certainly people who come up with exact numbers based on their personal budget calculations or symbology of some sort or another.
Comment by undergroundrailroad — 9/29/2007 @ 11:10 pm
Good find, UGR; let’s just say that I’m still a little weirded out by the pace of donations at 3 AM. Admittedly, many of us don’t keep the most regular hours. :)
And good point on PayPal. Could be I’m making a mountain of a molehill here.
Comment by Rojas — 9/29/2007 @ 11:18 pm
Just how much longer can the mainstream media dismiss Paul?
Comment by James — 9/30/2007 @ 1:45 pm
I know on ronpaulforums.com it’s popular to donate $17.76.
Comment by Tex MacRae — 9/30/2007 @ 2:07 pm