The Washington Post runs a story today with the headline 'N.H. Shifts to Other Neighbor: Kerry/Dean Loses Lead as January Voters Look Ahead to November'. Now, I'd say that's an accurate headline, if we're being strictly literal about things, but it seems to ignore dramatic recent movements in the polls, some of which have Dean at only a couple of points behind Kerry, (from KOS) with Dean rising rapidly and Kerry continuing an easy decline. The article was posted on January 24 and will be in today's (Sunday's) edition of the Post. So, maybe the right arictle, but it's about a week late.
Next, I can't get over this Dean phenomenon of raising money whenever things get tough. I don't know how many internet-based instruments the Dean camp has introduced to the internet-campaigning phenomenon, but it's got to be quite a few. Let's take just one that I think may be appriately linked to Dean's campaign - the rally-funding-differential-image. For each 'drive', an image on the Dean for America home page is updated each hour on the hour with the total number of contributors to the pledge and the total amount of money raised. Here's an example of the current 'drive' (full disclosure: of which I am a small part):
| 01/25/04 at 8 am | 01/25/04 at 9 am | 01/25/04 at 10 am | 01/25/04 at 9 pm | |||
 |  |  |  |
The number of new donations is fairly small for the early hours, smaller than would be average, because of the day and time of day we're talking about - Sunday mornings are not known for being prime donation times, I gather. My guess is that historical analysis (hmmmm....) would show that business hours during the week would be highest, with possibly weekday nights doing best. The small numbers are the reason you don't see the 'fill level' - the red part of the bat - rising very much in the early hours. You can see the fill level move when you compare the 8 am level on the left to the 9 pm level on the right.
A couple of quick stats based on the numbers above. Looking at the 8 am numbers, we have an average donation of $54.68 - that is, the average donation for the entirety of the drive thus far. I've seen this number fluctuate between $50 and $70 before, but it's fairly stable as far as I can tell, around the $55 mark.
Doing some hourly breakdowns, between 8 and 9 am there were 121 new contributions for a total of $6,130.46, or $50.66 average donation. Between 9 am and 10 am there were 160 new donors contributions for a total of $9,287.23, or $58.04 average donation.
