Photo from barbarajpeters.com
In April, we sent the Democratic candidates for an at-large position on the Montgomery County Council a short questionnaire that asked why they were running, their qualifications and why voters should choose them over other candidates, among other questions.
Nineteen candidates responded, and we published each questionnaire as they were returned to us.
After a period of time, we thought it would be interesting to look at the traffic generated by each post on the Source’s website, and the number of people reached on our Facebook page.
As of June 1, here are the results for each respondent, along with links to the questionnaires:
Candidate Web Traffic FB Reach Total Exposures
Jill Ortman-Fouse 493 480 973
Steve Solomon 298 444 742
Will Jawando 311 378 689
Danielle Meitiv 253 395 648
Evan Glass 221 380 601
Ashwani Jain 209 306 515
Brandy Brooks 181 329 510
Seth Grimes 176 329 505
Hans Riemer 188 290 478
Chris Wilhelm 180 284 464
Rosemary Arkoian 179 280 459
Marilyn Balcombe 172 276 448
Gabe Albornoz 165 263 428
Hoan Dang 148 271 419
Michele Riley 124 283 407
Neil Greenberger 74 278 352
Richard Gottfried 121 229 350
Cherri Branson 131 208 339
Lorna Phillips Forde 89 210 299
These numbers should in no way be looked at as a measure of each candidate’s relative strength going into the primary. There are too many variables affecting the traffic, such as length of time the post was on the site, the amount and type of paid or earned promotional efforts put in by each candidate and/or supporters to share the post, the relative level of social media use by each candidate’s supporters and friends, and so forth.
The real test will start with early voting next week, June 14, and end on Election Day, June 26.