As many know, the Howard Dean campaign has been encouraging supporters to write letters to undecided voters in New Hampshire and Iowa. I decided to see which states were most on fire for Dean when it came to writing letters to interested voters. As you can guess, I'm desperately trying to think of ways of avoiding work. As of Monday night, 125,744 letters had been written, as can be seen on the
Dean for America website, which gives a state by state breakdown
Notice that Massachusetts is #2 on the list, with 11,657 letters, despite having 1/6th the population of California, with 13,021 letters as of 6pm January 4th.
Taking some data from the US Census bureau, I wanted to see how many letters per 1000 population were being written
Through the magic of MS Excel, we can see where Dean's support is most intense.
Let's look at the top 5:
- Vermont, pop. 619,107, 2533 letters, 4.1 letters per 1000 population
- Massachusetts, pop. 6,433,422, 11657 letters, 1.8 letters per 1000 pop
- North Dakota, pop. 633,837, 1073 letters, 1.69 letters per 1000 population
- Oregon, pop. 3,559,596, 3340 letters, 0.938 letters per 1000 population
- District of Columbia, pop. 563,384, 435 letters, 0.772 letters
The answer, not surprisingly, is that the leader is Vermont, with a staggering 4 letters per 1000 population, followed by Massachusetts with 1.8 and North Dakota at 1.6. The rest of the top ten is rounded out by Oregon, District of Columbia, Washington State, New Mexico, Colorado, New Hampshire, and Arizona. In a development that should prove to be a good omen for swing states, Missouri is #11.
I have to say I'm sort of surprised by the presence of Arizona and North Dakota in the top ten, but to me that's evidence that the Dean campaign appeals to a large cross section of people. (As well as confirming, for those who didn't already know, that ND has a very small population :) Interestingly, support for Howard Dean seems to be strong in North Dakota, where Dean was enthusiastically received by an overflow crowd.
Rounding out the bottom 6, there is South Carolina, Louisiana, Idaho, Mississippi, Hawaii, and Kansas.
No surprises with Idaho, Mississippi, and Kansas, but, really, shouldn't we be doing better in SC and HI? HI is fairly liberal, and SC, as an early primary state, is someplace we should at least be a bit more competitive, when it comes to fervent letter-writers.
The original Excel spreadsheet is available if anyone wants to check my work.