Having fielded many internet surveys I too find the 114,000 number quite low. Typically for an opt-in list I will have responses in the 10% to 12% range for any given survey. Mind you the types of surveys I conduct are for financial institutions dealing with satisfaction with bank products, not exactly a subject that invites a response. Even with this we will see a 10% response rate over a 3 to 4 day period. Typically if someone doesn’t respond by then they won’t no matter how many reminder emails you send to them.

What is puzzling about the low response rate is that all they were asking for is a pledge to support Obama’s position. They weren’t asking for money or to fill out some long satisfaction survey. They were asked to pledge support for a person that they have already supposedly given money to. Why wouldn’t more people do it? I’m not buying the argument about leaving the window open longer will result in more responses. It just doesn’t happen that way.

Obama’s campaign quite simply found a great way around campaign financing. It provided them with a lot of money, they were able to conceal their large donors and they were able to advertise without any media prying that all these new people donated money to their campaign.

Have your big backer buy $100,000 in gift cards in $200 increments. Go to Survey Sampling and buy a listed sample. Heck they can even get names by demographic segments if they wanted to. It only costs about .06 per record. Enter in the 500 gift cards and attach the names you get from Survey Sampling to the credit card numbers and let it fly. No one from the FCC is ever going to call these people ask if they actually donated the money.

The Obama campaign can claim this wonderful internet recruitment system and there is no way to check it. Heck they would be foolish to put in fake names. Just use real ones, no one can ever verify it.