I Read 3,000 Emails from 2016 Presidential Candidates and I Learned Nothing
Bombarded. Besieged. Tortured.
These are the three words that best describe the state of my gmail inbox since June 1, 2015. That was the day I began the The Presidential Email Project, in the hope that I might learn something about politics and the 2016 election from the high-minded discourse of the esteemed statespeople running for President of the United States.
3,000 emails later, I can say with a sigh:
There is precious little to be learned from emails from our presidential candidates.
Why I Tortured My Inbox
The Presidential Email Project started innocently enough. Back in 2012, I subscribed to emails from both the Romney and Obama campaigns. I found it interesting how the email styles differed between the two candidates and how each would spin the same event (e.g. a debate) in his own way. I thought it would be an interesting experiment to do the same for the 2016 election.
Selfishly, I hoped that receiving emails directly from each campaign might make me more knowledgeable about the elections than others around me. Maybe I would receive advance notice of a policy initiative, or be invited to special Facebook chats or webinars.
Undaunted by the alarmingly high number of candidates, I subscribed to receive emails from every one of them, set up my Google Sheets tracking document, and waited for the emails to roll in.
And wow, did those emails roll in. Like waves hitting a canoe caught in a storm, presidential emails crashed into my inbox, flooding my account while I futilely bailed the data, by hand, into my tracking doc. 260 days later, on February 16th at 10:47am, after reading the 258th email from Ted Cruz and bringing my grand total 3,000, I officially called it quits.
The 5 Lessons from the Presidential Email Project
Despite my gripes, I did take a few lessons away from the project, just not what I had initially set out to learn. Here are my top five takeaways:
Lesson 1 — Candidates Email A Lot: 3,000 emails over 261 days works out to be 11.5 emails per day. But not all campaigns created equal amounts of inbox traffic:
When it came to emailing, no candidate hit “send” more often than Rand Paul, whose 421 emails give him first prize for most missives sent. Hillary Clinton and Mike Huckabee round out the top three with 373 and 301, respectively. On the other end of the spectrum, I received just five emails from Jim Webb. John Kasich did not start communicating until November, about three months after I signed up for his emails.
Indeed, the data reveals a fascinating difference in email strategies among major candidates. Rand Paul averaged 1.7 emails over the 247 days I tracked his emails, sometimes sending as many as 7 in a day. On the other hand, Jeb! Bush’s averaged just .6 notes per day over 244 days.
I’ll never know for sure why these two candidates emailed so differently. Perhaps Rand’s under-funded campaign selected emails as a cost-effective way to reach voters. Or perhaps his campaign targeted younger and more tech-savvy voters, and thus emailed more. Then again, maybe Jeb’s campaign decided to segment out California voters and concentrate on those living in states with earlier primary contests.
Additionally, the pace at which emails invaded my inbox was not steady over the course of the project.
Emails spiked at two predictable times. The first is the end of a fiscal quarter, after which candidates are required to report fundraising totals to the government. December 31 (47 emails), September 30 (43) and June 30 (36) ranked first, second and fourth overall for most emails sent in a day. Every single one of these 126 emails asked for a donation; many warned that supporters must contribute, or else the media would pronounce the campaign “weak” and ruin the candidate’s chances.
The second spike in emails occurred around Republican debates. On January 28, for example, the day of the final Republican debate before the Iowa Caucus, I received 38 emails, the third most out of all days in the project. These emails primarily came in three types: Protesting that the candidate was not on the main stage, imploring supporters to watch the debate to see what a great job the candidate was doing, and post-debate celebrations of how great a job the candidate did.
Lesson 2 — Candidates Mostly Use Email to Ask for Money:
If I had a nickel every time a candidate solicited a donation…I would now have $104.85. Candidates asked for money in 70% (2,097) of the 3,000 emails I received.
Candidates used all sorts of tactics to raise money: Celebrities guest emails (Clinton), requests from former presidents (Clinton & Bush), merchandise (everyone, see lesson four below), scare tactics (everyone), emergency donations (Cruz), “special, secure” links (Huckabee) and “grant match” programs (Cruz & Rubio). But most of the time, it was just good, old-fashioned, NPR-pledge-drive pestering. All candidates were guilty of numerous and repetitive solicitations for donations, but some were more guilty than others.
Out of the 15 candidates who sent 50 or more emails, John Kasich asked for money most often, 90% of the time. Ted Cruz solicited donations the least, in just 48% of emails, surprising for a candidate who was credited with an extensive (and therefore, theoretically, expensive) ground game.
The Rand Paul campaign was particularly brutal in this regard. His frequent emailing, combined with a high rate of emails requesting funds, resulted in a total of 346 fundraising requests. In other words, Rand Paul sent more emails requesting donations than 20 out of 21 other candidates sent in total. (Only Clinton sent more than 346 emails.)
The most annoying and upsetting fundraising emails were the ones that contained no other content except a request for money. Invariably, they went something like this: “Hello, friend. I really hate this part of my job. Can you spare $200, or whatever you’re able, to show the American people that our campaign is the strongest in this race? I’m counting on you, friend. Sincerely, Candidate. P.S. Donate to show the media that we’re a strong campaign.
“Can you spare $200, or whatever you’re able, today?”
— Every Candidate
The blue circles on the graph above show the percentage of emails sent by each candidate that did nothing else except ask for money. Bobby Jindal (haven’t heard his name in a while) led this category with 33% of his emails requesting funds. Jeb! Bush was right behind him at 31% of emails.
Lesson 3 — Candidates Don’t Discuss Issues via Email: All of that fundraising leaves very little room for discussing the issues. From abortion to voting rights, each of the 16 issues I tracked was soundly ignored.
The category of “the economy” was discussed most often by candidates, but even this (probably overly-broad) category was mentioned in only 13% of emails. For scale, remember that 70% of candidates’ emails asked for money.
This reluctance to even mention key issues surprised me. I had expected that candidates would use highly emotional issues like abortion, marriage equality or health care to rally supporters. Although overall this was not the case, some Republican candidates did pursue this strategy, especially with abortion: Rand Paul mentioned this issue in 14% of emails, Rick Santorum in 13% and Mike Huckabee in 10%.
Bernie Sanders discussed inequality in 21% of his 197 emails. The next highest candidate was Martin O’Malley, at 3%.
A significant portion of the emails I received, 41%, mentioned no issues at all. This category included emails that asked only for money, as well as those that advertised a debate, or asked readers to volunteer or watch a video.
In particular, Bush and Clinton were most silent on the issues, sending 69% and 65%, of emails, respectively, without mentioning any of them. Huckabee (27%) and Paul (20%) talked about issues most often, to their great credit. While the immense numbers of emails sent by both candidates greatly increased my frustration with this project, at least they were emailing about something.
Lesson 4 — Emails Can Be Very Entertaining (But Never on Purpose): Occasionally, emails made me laugh out loud, but this was almost never the intent of the campaigns. In particular, here are some of my favorite moments:
Merchandise: Candidates tried to sell some hilarious items. Ben Carson’s wife Candy recorded a Christmas album. Marco Rubio hawked a Marco Polo. The religious among us could buy a Rand Paul Skull Cap — oh wait, sorry, turns out that’s just a beanie, not a yarmulke. And of course, who can forget the omnipresent Make America Great Again Hat?. Yard signs are so 2012 (though you can still buy those too).
Typos: Most campaigns suffered from a lack of proofreading. Emails from Trump’s campaign frequently mixed writing in the first and third person before being signed by Trump himself. I received only seven emails from Lincoln Chafee, and one of them had the date incorrect in the subject line. John Kasich sent an email asking, “FNAME, are you with us?” (Mail merge can be tricky…)
Hyperbole: There was plenty of hyperbole to go around, especially from the Republican candidates. Most of the time it distressed me, but sometimes it went so far as to be comical: (longtime readers will recognize some of the quotes below)
“I am angry. The shameless rhetoric and revisionist history in Obama’s State of the Union tonight might fool those inside the Washington bubble, but Americans know empty words won’t fix our nation.” — Carly Fiorina, Jan 12
“I refuse to let Obama destroy our country! I refuse to walk my grandchildren through the charred remains of a once great America! I refuse to surrender!” — Mike Huckabee, Oct 31
“Both the media and the political establishment know I’m the Washington Machine’s worst nightmare.” — Rand Paul, Oct 27
“Bobby Jindal wins debate, neutered Republican establishment.” — Bobby Jindal, Sept 16
As time marched on, I ran further behind on reading the emails in my inbox. While catching up on weeks-old messages, I especially enjoyed reading in hindsight the pre-election, grandiose claims of the candidates who would go on to lose big:
“My campaign’s organization is set to shock people tonight.” Rand Paul, Feb 1, hours before receiving 8,500 votes in the Iowa Caucus
“Jeb will wipe the floor with Hillary.” — Jeb! Bush, Jan 30, hours before receiving 5,200 votes in the Iowa Caucus
“Our tsunami of momentum…has stunned everyone.” Carly Fiorina, Jan 30, hours before receiving 3,500 votes in the Iowa Caucus
“We need to be ready to springboard out of Iowa tomorrow night.” — Mike Huckabee, Jan 31, hours before receiving 3,300 votes in the Iowa Caucus
“Make no mistake, we will win this election.” Marco Rubio, Feb 9
Lesson 5 — Everybody Hates Hillary: In one of the most divisive campaigns in our history, it’s nice to know that candidates on both sides of the aisle have some common ground.
Everyone agrees that Hillary Clinton should not be President. Overall, 16% of emails disparaged Clinton or her campaign in some way. George Pataki (41%), Scott Walker (36%) and Kasich (34%) were the most vocal against Clinton.
Note that more emails bashed Clinton (16%) than mentioned the economy (13%), the most commonly discussed issue.
To Sum It All Up
That last stat summarizes everything I learned from the Presidential Email Project. I learned that email marketing is not a tool to disseminate information about a candidate or sway voters to your side. Maybe I should have guessed that at the beginning. After all, these emails are sent to a list of people who choose to receive them.
Instead, candidates use email to energize already-loyal supporters. Why do you energize voters? To raise money. How do you energize voters? By scaring them with a vision of the future that includes one of your rivals as president, most likely Hillary Clinton. Fundraise and scare. Fundraise and scare. Repeat about 2,998 more times.
In the end, I stopped this project because I could no longer justify the time spent mucking out my inbox.
Reading increasingly dull, depressing and repetitive emails became a sisyphean chore, rather than an intellectual exercise. There are only so many pleas for cash and attention that a person can read before he goes slightly insane.
It turns out that, for me, “so many” is 3,000. The 2016 presidential election burnt me out in February 2016, just as it really began.
