The Stats Are In: The Music Community Went To The Polls On Nov 4, 2008

I have not yet written a blog post about what I was up to, last summer (2008.) Or why the photo at the top of this page is of me standing in front of the stage at a Jack Johnson concert at the Gorge in rural Washington State, when I am originally from a suburb of NYC ... I'll get to that in a later post.

However it is related to the topic of this post - and my involvement with the non-partisan, nonprofit organization HeadCount. HeadCount's co-founder and Executive Director, Andy Bernstein, just released the following stats about HeadCount's voter registration work at music festivals and concerts, in 2008.

This is a momentous day for HeadCount. Check out Andy's blog post for the full story - this is just an excerpt.

We were even more excited when an independent organization studied the voter registration work of 25 different organizations, and HeadCount had some of the best stats in all the key measurements.

Yeah, our report card arrived. And it looks like we got A’s.



The study, prepared by the Washington, D.C.-based New Organizing Institute, won’t be public until next month, but the preliminary data in a draft version showed the following:

- 92% of the people we registered made it onto the voter rolls. We were number one in this category, (compared to about 25 other groups in this study, who averaged 80% in aggregate).

- 85% of our registrations were considered “impactful,” meaning the registration was unique and that the person was not already registered at the same address. This was the second best percentage for any group in the study.

- 72% of the people we successfully registered in the “field” (at concerts) voted, compared to a national average of 59%. In this category, we had the third best totals of any group.