A poll of sorts

I got an email this morning from Barack Obama. Well me and probably thousands of other people! But anyway I like this news style of "e-campaign" where the candidate "emails you" with an update of how things are going - and asking you to "join with them" (read - give some money!). Essentially its just a regular email newsletter - but from a voters point of view - it reads way better.

Senator Obama was just letting me know that they have raised over US$25million towards the campaign - an incredible amount of money! 23.5 of this is eligible to be used in the primary campaign. As an indication of how huge these numbers are - at the same point in the 2000 campaign, Al Gore had raised US$8.9 million.

How this compares to others is almost like a poll if you will. Heres how they stack up. (all USD)
Hillary Clinton (D) - 26 million
Barack Obama (D) - 25 million
Mitt Romney (R) - 23 million
Rudy Giuliani (R) - 15 million
John Edwards (D) - 14 million
John McCain (R) - 12.5 million

What makes Obama's haul all the more impressive - is that there were twice as many people giving money than any other campaign. Over 100 000 people gave to the Obama campaign, Hillary was next best with just over 50 000. Some other stats - over 5000 community meetings have been held for the Obama campaign, 50 per cent of their donations were online.

This is fantastic "grassroots" campaigning by Obama, and I continue to be impressed!

To finish I'll leave you with some words from Obama's email

"This milestone for our campaign proves something I learned as a community
organizer long ago: that together a whole lot of ordinary people can achieve
something extraordinary."