Winners & Losers

The results are in from our first-ever “Slow Zebra” and “Sharpest Tool” contests, although it’s safe to say not everybody is pleased by the outcomes.

We’re pleased, though, which is really all that matters. In fact, the traffic and turnout was so good on both of these contests that we’ll be expanding the categories (and soliciting your ideas) as we launch new Palmetto political polls in the weeks and months to come.

Anyway, let’s start with the tallies before we get to the fallout …

In the “Slow Zebra” race, it wasn’t even close.

SC Hotline founder Jeffrey Sewell won in a landslide with 44% of the vote. There race for runner-up was tight, however, with both the S.C. Employment Security Commission and Spartanburg GOP Chairman Rick Beltram each “earning” 20% of the vote.

In the “Sharpest Tool” race, S.C. Policy Council President Ashley Landess is officially South Carolina’s smartest politico, garnering 20% of the vote. Landess edged out Charleston’s Chad Walldorf, who heads up the S.C. Club for Growth, and Richard Quinn, both of whom earned 18% of the vote.

Needless to say, Sewell did not take his “Slowest Zebra” status in stride.

In fact, beginning yesterday he yanked FITS from SC Hotline’s blogroll and has stopped posting and headlining our articles …

So how much traffic is Sewell’s crybaby act costing us?

Let’s look at the numbers …

SC Hotline typically refers around 300 page views to our site each day – or about 1.8% of our total audience.

Don’t get us wrong – we’re not trying to diminish that number. We’ll take every hit we can get – which is exactly what we’re doing.

Taking.

According to our internal stats, FITS page view count from yesterday was 16,153, and with several hours still left to count today we’re already at 13,625 – which is on pace to exceed that number.

Check back later this evening for a final tally, but it looks like the first-day impact of Sewell’s boycott is actually going to be a net increase in FITS traffic.

Anyway, we’ll be tracking this stat in detail over the next few days because our suspicion is that in both the short-term and long-term, Sewell is only hurting himself with this little stunt.

In other words, people who have used SC Hotline in the past to access our site are now simply going to bypass Sewell’s aggregator and come here directly – which is good for us, and bad for him.

What can we say, Mr. Ascot didn’t win “Slowest Zebra” for nothing …

Update – The numbers are in from our first post-SC Hotline day … 17,031 page views. Thank you, Mr. Sewell …

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