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technoratiIt is apples and oranges. The RNC process is much simpler than the DNC process for what we're comparing. There was 1) vote and 2) give your email address. The DNC had...
1) Give a form of your address or zip+4 (because of traffic, the geocoding process gives way to making people use the USPS lookup, so that's 1.5)
2) The same fields as the RNC, plus full address
3) User-supplied subject and fully body (no defaults)
4) Preview and send
But if we're looking at past campaigns and 80,000 is the best number, then the multiple 100,000+ campaigns or the 250,000+ campaign we did on Path to 9/11 and ABC should come into the mix.
"Viral" is a matter of context, I suppose. It probably went viral in page views, which is why the bounce rate is so high, but even as by "going viral" it still underperformed compared to an average send for the DNC. And if it did go viral, then the RNC list performed even worse than the math shows -- how much worse depends on just how viral.
Let's suppose the bounce rates for the two lists were equal and that all action came from the email list -- 43% bounced for the DNC just from email, 43% bounced from the RNC just from email. That means that there were only 21,000 page views from RNC list, versus 120,000 for the DNC. With those numbers, it's a 0.3% click-through rate for the RNC and a 3.4% click-through rate for the DNC -- over 11 times better. But we know those page view numbers aren't accurate on either side, simply because there's always some amount of "viral" to everything...it's just what we have to work with.
So let's look at the value of "viral" -- new names. My experience has been that new names range from 20% to 40% of all action takers (but it can range to either side of that). Let's give the DNC the low end -- 20%. Let's give the RNC the high end -- 40%. That means that the DNC had 13,600 new names and the RNC had 3,600 new names. In other words, given a 20% difference in new names, the DNC still had just under 4 times as many new names as the RNC's "viral" campaign did.
Without more data it makes it educated speculation, but if the argument is that the RNC's was easier and it also went viral, then it would mean that the list performed even more poorly than the original calculations.
Apples and Oranges...
The difference here is more easily explained by the different sign on processes. The RNC application is a two page process in which you:
1) Vote
2) Give your email address
Is the higher "bounce" rate anything more than natural attrition you'd experience on a secondary page? Especially since when you land on the page, it says, "You have selected Hillary Clinton" or whomever in big type, followed by a request for an email address in smaller type? People might have missed the request, or given that the results are posted before you vote, figure it's not worth the hassle to give your address.
When I was at the RNC, a similar survey action generated more than 80,000 votes with a very low bounce rate. (Actually, this was a more intensive, multi-question survey.) However, a key difference was that we did not require someone we knew to be on our list to give their email address to vote. It was a one-step process for most people. So our action rate was higher as a result.
The key though is that the RNC has built something viral and worth talking about in the press. Because it wasn't a standard, cookie-cutter, issue-based call to action, it attracted attention beyond the email list. I'd be willing to bet that most of the people who signed up were new to the RNC.
How many people who signed the DNC call to action were new to the DNC? Probably relatively few. It was probably the same people signing with the email address already on file, or the same people signing with a different email address.