An Inbox Full of Nothing

(The Presidential Email Project, November 2015)

Summary: 318 Emails in 30 Days

The 16 remaining candidates for President of the United States held their email pace steady in November, sending a total of 318 emails over the course of the month, compared to 307 in October.

For the first time since August, Rand Paul took first place in the monthly email contest with 55 notes. Ted Cruz made the top three for the first time in the campaign, sending 32 emails, while Hillary Clinton and Marco Rubio tied for third, with 29 emails each.

November’s first place finish increased Paul’s lead in total emails over fellow Republican Mike Huckabee. Despite sending a campaign low of just 28 emails in November, Huckabee retained the number two spot, with Clinton just behind in third place.

Campaigns Ex Nihilo

As I noted in my article last month, discussion of political issues is disappointingly (but not surprisingly) rare in these campaign emails. Important issues like healthcare and military spending are discussed infrequently (7% and 3% of emails since June, respectively) while 66% of all emails contain requests for donations.

Further analysis of the data reveals that some candidates are worse than others in this regard. In particular, Hillary Clinton and Jeb! Bush are the two candidates sending the most emails devoid of meaningful content.

In addition to tracking how often emails mention political issues like those mentioned above (full list here), I also track how often emails contain 4 categories of “non-content:”

· Debate: An email that advertises a debate or remarks on a candidate’s performance

· Fundraising: An email that asks for a donation

· Merchandise: An email that markets a candidate’s merchandise

· Organization building: Emails that solicit volunteers, share a candidate’s op/ed or a video, among many other activities

I can therefore refine the data to show how many of a candidate’s emails contain nothing but one of these “non-issue” categories. Since June, here is what these stats look like for the top 12 emailing candidates:

In November an astonishing 86% of the emails from Hillary Clinton were devoid of discussion of political issues. Said another way, out of the 29 emails the Clinton campaign sent in November, only 4 mentioned issues of any kind. In October, the Bush campaign was just as bad.

As the graph shows, the Clinton and Bush campaigns have consistently handed in the highest percentage of non-issue emails. (With the exception of the September spike in all candidates’ numbers, caused by the end of quarter push for financing.)

So what is happening here? One theory is that Clinton and Bush feel voters are so familiar with them that they don’t need to provide information about their stances on the issues. This idea strikes me as impossibly naive for campaigns run by experienced politicians who both suffer from a lack of excitement among supporters.

My most plausible theory for the lack of content from the Clinton campaign is that I’m simply on the wrong email list. I signed up for Hillary’s general emails, as I did for all of the other candidates; I have therefore not signed up for “The Feed,” Hillary’s more detailed messages about campaign events and other happenings. It could be that Clinton reserves these messages for deeper thoughts on the issues on which presidential candidates are supposed to have opinions.

The problem with this theory is Marco Rubio. In early October Rubio’s campaign began publishing “The Daily Kickoff,” a similar, separate, daily roundup of happenings on the Rubio campaign. Since then, the number of non-issue emails from Rubio have decreased. This strategy makes more sense to me: A voter who is excited enough about a candidate to sign up for a daily blast probably already knows that candidate’s stance on the issues. Daily emails could then be used to further excite these engaged voters, leaving the general emails to explain Rubio’s stance on the issues to the less committed.

Perhaps the Clinton campaign has taken the opposite approach: Using the general emails for lighter content in the hopes of exciting subscribers to learn more about the candidate in the specific emails. Or perhaps the Clinton campaign’s targeting is sophisticated enough to see that I have not clicked on any of her emails, and has therefore determined that I don’t want to read emails about the issues.

For Jeb! I offer no explanation. From day one, Bush’s lackluster emails have been appropriate for a lackluster campaign. But hey, maybe he can still fix it?

Foreign Policy Pop

The November terrorist attacks in Paris ushered in a wave of emails discussing both foreign policy and immigration. While just 12% of October emails discussed foreign policy and 6% immigration, those numbers jumped to 22% and 13%, respectively.

Rand Paul was the most vociferous about both of these issues in November, sending 20 emails discussing foreign policy and 16 discussing immigration. Hillary Clinton was the only candidate to not mention either one of those issues in November (see section above.)

Email Oddities

• John Kasich finally emailed! Twice! Both notes asked for money. Kasich had not emailed me since I signed up for his list this summer
• Scott Walker resurrected his campaign email list in November to ask for a bailout: “’Walker for America’ incurred a campaign debt,” Walker wrote on Nov 6 and again on Nov 23. “…it is my hope that you and all of our supporters will chip in…so we can end this campaign in the black.” For the record, it appears that Walker was against the bank bailouts of 2008
• Bernie Sanders was unusually quiet in November — his campaign sent just 13 emails after averaging 20 per month from June through October. Donald Trump emailed 9 times in November — his most prolific month yet.
• To the enormous credit of all candidates still in the race, not a single one mentioned Christmas before Thanksgiving
• Speaking of Christmas, Ted Cruz and Rick Santorum both railed against the political correct-ness of saying “Happy Holidays.” Each candidate prefers “Merry Christmas.” “Christmas is a special time to spread the joy of Christ’s birth,” explains Santorum. “I want to remember the real reason we are celebrating.”
• Speaking of Santorum, one of his emails was caught in my spam filter because gmail suspected that it contained malware. Nope, it just contained a link to his website. Whoops!
• If Rand Paul continues to email at his present rate, by the end of December he will have become the first candidate to email me 300 times. I haven’t decided whether I’ll pop champagne to celebrate my hard work, or delete my email address, shut down my computer and move to Canada (anything to be nearer to this guy.)
• Rand Paul advertised some odd campaign memorabilia throughout November, including a Hillary Hard Drive (complete with wiping cloth), Rand Paul “First Dad” Camping Chair, and a Rand Paul Skull Cap — which turns out not to be a yarmulke but just a tight black hat
• In October, the Rubio campaign emailed me on the 21st to say that they had reached their fundraising goal, and that I would not be receiving any more emails. They apparently did not meet their goal for November; I received fundraising emails up until the end of the month.
• I did not receive any emails from Jeb! Bush with the slogan, “Jeb Can Fix It.” Extremely disappointing.

See you next month!

What is the Presidential Email Project? I’ve subscribed to the email lists of every 2016 presidential candidate. I read every email and track the topics covered, key phrases mentioned and other interesting statistics. Every month I’ll report on trends that I’m seeing. You can read more about my methodology here, as well as articles for October, September. This is the fifth post in the series. More writing from my day job here.