techPresident - Twittering Iowa - Comments

The real power of this experiment

mistermind — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 21:56:20 -0500

It seems to me that the real power of this experiment is not so much to get the caucus results sooner - but to get better, fuller results. Aside from being ridiculously complex, the Iowa Democratic caucuses are also maddeningly opaque. Unbelievable as it may seem, the raw vote totals are never released to the public, only the calculated delegate totals. (See: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/18/opinion/18cranberg.html.) Your experiment, if it succeeds, will shed more light on this process than ever before.

Great idea....

shimanepdf — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 15:56:37 -0500

I'll add to my twitter following group.

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Not just faster

Patrick Ruffini — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 21:46:32 -0500

I'd be willing to bet this is as good as the media entrance polling. Nothing is as good as final results naturally, but I'd like to see how close something like this could get.

And in the case of the Democratic Caucus, we've never had a real sense of how support actually broke down pre-viability (raw votes are not reported), so this has the chance to surface new information, and tell the story of what actually happened inside the caucuses.

Faster != better

Fred Stutzman — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 17:18:13 -0500

While this is an interesting concept, I don't think it will prove that the internet is necessarily better. Faster, but not necessarily better. Of course, we've known the internet is faster than the press for over a decade now, so that's not surprising.

Twittering Iowa

Patrick Ruffini — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 14:31:51 -0500

Can the Internet do a better job at covering election night than the media? We are about to find out.

I would like to launch an experiment with Twitter on Iowa Caucus night. If you're caucusing in Iowa on January 3rd, sign up for Twitter, make sure you have the mobile feature turned on for the night, and send a Twitter a text message with your caucus location and the results in 140 characters or less. If possible, please send your message from inside the caucus location as the vote totals are being announced. Make sure your tweet contains the word "caucus" or is prefixed "@IowaCaucus" so we'll pick it up at the account we have designated for this purpose. We'll be tabulating the results and providing a real-time tally of our totals in the Republican and Democratic Caucuses.

Read on for more about what will unfold on January 3rd...