In the last 24 hours, Obama has amassed 1,436 new online Demands, from supporters lobbying for his appearance in local towns around the country. This brings his total to over 47,000, far ahead of the other leading Democratic candidates, Hillary Clinton and John Edwards. Meanwhile, Huckabee has gained a more modest 258 new people in the same period to inch ahead of fellow Republican candidates such as John McCain and Ron Paul.
The Eventful Demand data reflects the findings of The Des Moines Register's latest poll, placing Obama and Huckabee as the winners of today's influential caucus.
The strength of online support in Iowa and the late surge in Demands may be seen as an indicator of today's results, and could also indicate the engagement of a key demographic for winning the Iowa caucus - the youth vote.
Eventful Demand is a free online service that empowers supporters to lobby for political figures to come and speak in their local town. Using Eventful, candidates can track where they are most in demand, schedule appearances based on this data and also communicate directly with the Demanders via email.
Eventful Demand is a viral service that has transformed the way that audiences interact with public figures and performers, empowering them to directly influence where events take place. Eventful's viral tools make it easy for campaigns and supporters to spread the word by including links and widgets in blogs, MySpace pages, Facebook groups and other social networking sites.
"Since the inception of the 2008 campaign, we've seen our users create grass-roots campaigns on our site, to lobby for their preferred candidate to come speak in their local town," said Jordan Glazier, CEO at Eventful. "One of the key themes of this election has to be voter empowerment, enabling people to have their say on the issues that impact them the most. The increase in Demands ahead of today's caucus reflects this, and could well be an indicator of the result."
About Eventful Inc.
San Diego based Eventful, Inc., operates Eventful.com, the leading events website which enables its community of users to discover, promote, share and create events throughout the world. Eventful users select from nearly 4 million events taking place in local markets throughout the world, from concerts and sports to singles events and political rallies. Eventful's Demand service enables users to influence where their favorite performers appear by creating viral grass-roots campaigns to "Demand" them in their town.
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LEWIS PR for Eventful Louise Tipton, +1-415-992-4400 eventful@lewispr.com