Well, Now, This is Kind of a Rookie Mistake in Strategic Political Thinking ...

Writing at The Atlantic, Alexis C. Madrigal calls 2018 "The Facebook Election That Wasn't."

Campaigns have spent $3 billion on TV and radio, doubling their spending from 2014. The dueling campaigns for one of Florida’s Senate seats and for the state’s governorship alone have plowed $354 million onto the airwaves. According to Facebook’s Ad Archive Report, that’s almost exactly what all political advertisers combined spent on the platform from May to November 3. We might have spent the past two years talking about Facebook’s electoral impact, but the people with skin in the game are betting it is about a tenth as important as TV and radio.

How much was spent on one thing versus another, in and of itself, tells us very little about how "important" either thing is.

There are a bunch of different ways to reach voters. Some of those ways reach the same voters as others. Some of those ways reach different voters than others. Some reach more voters more times at the same cost.

If it costs me $1 to reach a voter using Facebook, $2 to reach that same voter with a piece of direct mail, and $3 to reach that same voter with a radio or television ad, it does not follow that because I spent $1, $2, and $3 on those things respectively that the last one is "more important." It just means that I spent what I had to spend to reach that voter via each medium.

And it may cost me $1 to reach that voter 10 times, rather than one time, via Facebook (and to reach 100 other voters because that voter shares it with all his friends) and $30 to reach that same voter 10 times by radio or television. Should I multiply my Facebook spending by 30 just to show that I consider Facebook "important" even if I don't need the additional repetitions?

I would say that the last part is very relevant. If I get a flier in the mail, I probably don't run over to show it to my neighbor. If I see an ad on television, I probably don't DVR it and invite everyone I know over to watch it. But if I see an interesting piece on Facebook, I might well "share" it to my ~5,000 "Facebook friends" and 100 of them may take a look at it.

Social media is cheaper, but that doesn't mean it's less "important."

If you're a voter, ask yourself this: Which affected your thinking about the various candidates more -- TV ads or memes your friends threw at you on Facebook?

Looks Like Heavy Turnout to Me ...

I went out this morning to put Richardson/Argenziano signs up at the 21st of 21 polling places I was able to get to in Alachua County, Florida, and hung out for a couple of hours waving one of the signs at traffic. More on (another candidate's) signs at the end of this post.

I'd classify this polling place as "suburban" -- maybe two miles outside the Gainesville city limits and pretty much surrounded by middling to upscale housing developments.

Alachua County has about 180,000 registered voters divided into 63 precincts, so about 2,850 voters per precinct.

In 2016, 44% of Alachua County's registered voters voted early rather than on election day. I suspect that percentage is higher this year, but let's go with it. For this precinct, that would amount to 1,254 voters who have already voted, leaving a maximum possible number of 1,596 voters who could potentially cast ballots.

The polls are open for 12 hours, from 7am to 7pm. So in order to hit 100% voter turnout (excluding the early vote), we'd be talking about an average of 133 voters per hour per precinct.

I didn't try to count traffic during the morning rush hour leading up to 9am.  Traffic in general was heavy because it always is (the polling place is on a main road leading into Gainesville. Lots of work traffic, and lots of school buses slowing that work traffic down), but I didn't pay attention to how many vehicles were turning in to the polling place.

Between 9:20am and 9:30am, I did two separate "minute counts." Each of them had four cars per minute coming in to the polling place.  That's 240 cars per hour, which would result in maximum turnout in less than seven hours.

No, I'm not expecting 100% turnout. There will presumably be slower stretches through the day.

But I will not be surprised if there's higher turnout this year than in 2016. Early voting locations looked very busy last week as well.

About those signs:

There are three county commission candidates: Democrat Marihelen Wheeler, independent Scott Costello, and Libertarian Greg Caudill.

I saw lots of sign-waving for Costello at early voting locations, but as far as stationary signage at polling places goes, Caudill seemed to be beating both of his opponents as of last night and this morning. I saw a Caudill van out hitting polling places at the same time I was last night. This morning at the polling place I went two, there were two Caudill signs, one Wheeler sign, and no Costello signs.

BUT: One of the Caudill signs had been bend down flat to the ground by its frame, and the other one had been torn off its frame entirely and left lying on the ground. I unbent the one, and lent one of my own frames to the other. Shame on whoever pulled that shit.

One of My Rare "Speaking as a Veteran" Posts

Speaking as a veteran, I don't see any good reason why veterans should be considered off-limits for the kind of mockery directed at other people -- especially politicians.

In fact, I'll take it a bit further than that:

If you're running for public office, or even just expressing a political opinion, while playing the "veteran" card, whining like a three-year-old when someone makes fun of you kind of blows the whole Sergeant Stryker image.