Last night, Mother Jones leaked secret footage of GOP Presidential candidate Mitt Romney from a private fundraising event earlier this year. In the video, Romney reveals what he thinks of President Obama's supporters, and the 47% of Americans who will supposededly vote for Obama.
The footage instantly caught fire online. Naturally, we wanted to see how far it went in online video. We used our True Reach methodology, combining the performance of clips related to the the secret footage video, Romney's response, audience responses to the footage, and more.
In all, the secret footage has collected more than 2.4 million views, and it's climbing fast. We've identified over 130 clips related to the secret footage, including multiple versions of the 47 percent video, Romney's comments on how he would treat Obama, what he thinks of his consultants, how he would win the election, as well as his thoughts on the middle east.
As always, we wanted to provide some context for Romney's 47 percent footage, so we've compared it to the biggest online moment of the Rebublican Convention, Clint Eastwood's speech. 'Eastwooding,' as it's been termed, drove 555,000 views in its first 24 hours.
We also looked at Romney's biggest ad campaign of the election season, Fine?. It takes advantage of Obama's political gaffe, when Obama said that the "private sector is doing fine." Fine? has driven 1.5 million views to date (it launched in mid June), nearly 1 million views less than Romney's 47% footage has generated in less than 24 hours.
We also compared the 47% footage to all the republican campaigns capitalizing on Obama's "doing fine" gaffe. Combined, the "doing fine" ads by Romney, the RNC, super PAC Americans for Prosperity, and super PAC Restore our Future have secured more than 2.3 million views. Romney's 47 percentage footage has already surpassed 2.3 million views.
It's hard to say how big the 47 percent footage will get online, but from the numbers we've seen just this morning, this is only going to get worse for the Romney campaign over the next few days.
What do you think of the secret footage? Let us know in the comments action below!
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Update: As of 5:00 EST, Romney's 47 Percent footage has driven over 3.5 million views from 150+ clips.
