Poking holes in OFA’s numbers

In his column Thursday morning, Dana Milbank took on Organizing for America and the number of pledges it delivered to Congress on Wednesday.

[T]he canvassing of Obama’s vaunted e-mail list of 13 million people resulted in just 114,000 pledges — a response rate of less than 1 percent. Workers gathered 100,000 more from street canvassing. The DNC got to 642,000 by making three photocopies of each pledge so that each signer’s senators and representative could get one.

Yikes, that was certainly something I missed yesterday. Natalie Wyeth, OFA’s spokeswoman, told ABC News that the comparisons to Obama’s campaign that most people are making aren’t accurate.

“This effort was designed to give our supporters the tools to influence their elected officials,” she said. “Of course we delivered a pledge to each of their Members of Congress – 642,000 pledges. That’s what we said we were delivering and that’s what we did.”

She also said that OFA has urged people to call their representatives in Congress. “When this wraps up tomorrow,” she said, “we will have generated close to 175,000 calls to members of Congress.”

I can see both sides of this. On one hand, 114,000 pledges and 175,000 calls doesn’t seem like much for a national campaign with an email list of 13 million strong and Obama’s popularity.

On the other hand, OFA is a victim of Obama’s campaign success and his massive email list. There isn’t a useful metric – as far as percentages go – to measure OFA’s success because what it is doing is new.

What do you think? The comments section awaits below.

jeremy.jacobs@digital-stage.thehill.com