While deciding which emails to keep and which had to go, I realized that some of the emails I ignored on a daily basis became interesting when looked at over a long period of time.

One such collection were emails that I had received from BarackObama.com, the website used by President Barack Obama’s two campaigns and the political apparatus he has maintained. With Obama’s time in office coming to an end next month, I thought examining these emails might be a different way of looking back over the time he’s been in office.

The Data

The email data includes 1,945 emails sent from info@barackobama.com between January 20, 2009 and November 30, 2016. I suppose this wasn't the first time I was inspired to do some spring cleaning, because there is a seven month gap in the data from December 2010 through June 2011.

This dataset includes emails I got from the Obama campaign in that time period, but does not represent every email sent by the campaign. I am a registered Democrat living in Pennsylvania. I was also a campaign staffer, a donor, and a volunteer. All of these factors would have dictated the specific emails I got. Additionally, the campaign most likely A/B tested language so there are probably multiple versions out there of the emails I was sent.

The Method

I exported all the emails to a .mbox file from Gmail and sorted through them using a series of Python scripts I wrote. Charts were put together in Excel.

The Results

Who Sends the Emails

Campaigns will send emails “from” prominent individuals to get your attention. Maybe this time Barack Obama really is emailing me looking for my insight. Better open the email just in case!

I got emails from 139 different names, but almost 60% of all the emails came from just 10: