Jamie raised $14K so far and spent 10k on the primary, winning 28K votes (!!), meaning getting a vote for 36cts, which seems fairly efficient.
For figuring out spending effectiveness, the question is how many votes she would have gotten if she hadn’t spend any money on the primary. My guess is, perhaps, a couple hundred fewer votes.
I am not sure about that. What makes you think so? Spending around 15k divided by $200 means that budget bought 75 votes, yeah? What we spent the money on in terms of outreach: texting the ~50k NPP (if I am recalling the number correctly) and the republican voters in the district, specifically between the topics of Israeli influence in government affairs, Epstein files, and the Kirk investigation mean more to those voters. I have been flipping former Simon voters to my side, but that is what is expensive. However, I’ve found a lot of the older, wealthy dems do care a lot about AI and have concerns about it (not polling, just anecdotes).
Another anecdote: Simon is popular, but one person who refused to even speak with me because she was pro-Simon has since come around and now has my yard sign in her front yard and she defends me to her neighbors. Simon is popular, but it only takes a little digging to see how voters would change their mind on her. Not something to post publicly, though.
My guess would be something like: starts at $200/vote and then gradually falls off as diminishing marginal returns kick in.
But in terms of my overall appraisal of the situation, I’m operating under a different heuristic: incumbents are very difficult to beat unless they are unpopular. And, as far as I know, Lateefah Simon is perfectly popular.
A heuristic I’ve heard used is that spending on advertising in primary elections in inexpensive media markets has an effect of roughly $100/net vote. On the other hand, Berkeley is an expensive area to run ads, so it should be higher.
(And this should be treated as a primary election, because it’s a Democrat vs. Democrat contest.)
Sometimes we see races where one side starts spending large amounts all of a sudden and the polls shift; this lets us get an okay-but-not-great measurement of the cost-effectiveness of ads. See eg here (search “Iowa”) for an example—though admittedly that was spending by a super PAC, which is generally somewhat less effective than campaign spending, so you should divide those cost estimates, maybe by a factor of 1.5 or so.
For figuring out spending effectiveness, the question is how many votes she would have gotten if she hadn’t spend any money on the primary. My guess is, perhaps, a couple hundred fewer votes.
I am not sure about that. What makes you think so? Spending around 15k divided by $200 means that budget bought 75 votes, yeah? What we spent the money on in terms of outreach: texting the ~50k NPP (if I am recalling the number correctly) and the republican voters in the district, specifically between the topics of Israeli influence in government affairs, Epstein files, and the Kirk investigation mean more to those voters. I have been flipping former Simon voters to my side, but that is what is expensive. However, I’ve found a lot of the older, wealthy dems do care a lot about AI and have concerns about it (not polling, just anecdotes).
Another anecdote: Simon is popular, but one person who refused to even speak with me because she was pro-Simon has since come around and now has my yard sign in her front yard and she defends me to her neighbors. Simon is popular, but it only takes a little digging to see how voters would change their mind on her. Not something to post publicly, though.
Mmmh, good point. What’s your guess about cost per vote for the general? Seems cruxy to figure out.
My guess would be something like: starts at $200/vote and then gradually falls off as diminishing marginal returns kick in.
But in terms of my overall appraisal of the situation, I’m operating under a different heuristic: incumbents are very difficult to beat unless they are unpopular. And, as far as I know, Lateefah Simon is perfectly popular.
I don’t understand that $200 per vote number, it seems absurdly high.
A heuristic I’ve heard used is that spending on advertising in primary elections in inexpensive media markets has an effect of roughly $100/net vote. On the other hand, Berkeley is an expensive area to run ads, so it should be higher.
(And this should be treated as a primary election, because it’s a Democrat vs. Democrat contest.)
Sometimes we see races where one side starts spending large amounts all of a sudden and the polls shift; this lets us get an okay-but-not-great measurement of the cost-effectiveness of ads. See eg here (search “Iowa”) for an example—though admittedly that was spending by a super PAC, which is generally somewhat less effective than campaign spending, so you should divide those cost estimates, maybe by a factor of 1.5 or so.
Mmmh, thanks