“E-Associations? Using Internet to Connect Citizens: the Case of Meetup.com” by Thomas Sander
Paper Prepared for American Political Science Association Conference, Sept. 2005
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election was one of the first ones in which the Internet played a starring role
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, and the
fact that I’m presenting to political scientists, here are some observations specifically
about political Meetups.
Three things seemed especially interesting about the political Meetups we observed: first
that the use of Meetup tended to be left-leaning politically; second that the political
Meetups along certain dimensions looked unlike the other Meetups; and third, some
speculation about whether Meetups are or are not candidate-specific.
1) Left leaning tilt of Meetup groups. Meetup aims to be non-partisan and lets anyone
set up a political group that doesn’t advocate crimes, bigotry, etc. Despite this, there
seems to be a noticeable leftist tilt of the Meetup groups. For example, a count in October
2004 showed 379 Meetups that were pro Bush in some way
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versus 2,413 that were
against Bush in some way.
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Moreover the number of attendees in a month (over last 6
months from June through November) was 10-15 times higher per month for Kerry than
for Bush in an environment where neither campaign was pushing individuals toward
Meetup.com. There is some evidence that Internet users tip slightly liberal but nothing
close to this magnitude.
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I’m not sure what to make of this observation,
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although one
thoughtful commentator at an earlier presentation of these data suggested that this may be
a consequence of the other available channels for liberals and conservatives to express
themselves politically. Over the last generation, there has been a dramatic increase in the
number of evangelical Christians (more apt to be conservative) and a significant decline
in unions (more often liberal politically). These net changes may have left liberals more
thirsting for avenues of political engagement and have given conservatives more
Internet, changed the equation of where the funding would come from for the primaries and the general
election.
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George Bush raised $13-14 million online (5% of total contributions), recruited 1.2 million volunteers,
and enlisted over 6 million e-mail activists. And www.johnkerry.com attracted 750,000 volunteers, 2.5
million e-mail subscribers, and $82 million in online contributions (33% of the total he raised). Moreover,
the total contributions of people contributing under $200 quadrupled from 2000 to 2004 according to the
Campaign Finance Institute (much of it presumably directly traceable to the rise of the Internet as a
fundraising tool). As a point of comparison, Kerry raised more from the Internet than Gore raised from all
campaign contributors in 2000 (approximately $50 million). [Statistics from Alexandra Samuel’s “Internet
plays wild card into U.S. politics” Toronto Star, 10/18/2004, p. D1 and “Glen Justice’s “Kerry Kept Money
Coming With Internet as His A.T.M., New York Times, 11/6/2004, p. 12.]
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49 Bush Meetups and 330 Bush 2004 Meetups.
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Against Bush (131 Meetups), Impeach Bush (277), Repubs Against Bush (137), Kerry in 2004 (859),
Democratic Party (490), Democracy for America (ex-Dean) (509 groups).
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Georgia Tech. Survey showed 25% very conservative/conservative in U.S. and 32% liberal or very
liberal. http://www.cc.gatech.edu/gvu/user_surveys/survey-04-1996/graphs/general/political.html
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Meetup.com speculates that it partly had to do with the fact that Democratic politics relies more on
lower-level grassroots contributions than Republicans and that the Bush campaign decided not to promote
Meetup.com and build their own system. They did so since Meetup couldn’t offer the campaign perfect
behind-the-scenes integration, control over the groups or communications with them, and integration of
individuals’ activity and demographics (e.g. Meetup activity, donations, volunteering for campaign, where
they lived, prior voting, , etc). For this reason, the Bush campaign did not promote Meetup. [Private
communication with Matt Meeker, Meetup, December 2004.] But the Kerry campaign also did not
promote Meetup and built a parallel operation, but wound up with many more Meetup participants in a
pretty evenly divided race.
Convention