Andrew Yang's website deluged by thousands of visitors within minutes of his free money promise

Andrew Yang&#039;s gamble sounds like it has paid off.

(Image credit: Win McNamee/Getty Images)

published 13 September 2019

Say what you want about entrepreneur Andrew Yang's universal basic income plan; it turns out people really love free money!

After Yang announced his intention to give 10 random families $1,000 a month for a year if they signed up on his website, there was a rush of traffic to Yang2020.com. Eric Ming, the digital director of Yang's campaign, reported that just moments after Yang made his announcement at the Democratic debate in Houston, there were "over 116,000 people live" on his website at a single moment.

Of course, that's great news for Team Yang, whose candidate is polling at 3 percent in RealClearPolitics' aggregate. For everyone that signs up for the free money raffle, that's another valuable email address on the campaign's rolls. "Yang will be able to direct a rush of traffic to his site, boost his name-recognition, and blast primary voters' inboxes in perpetuity," Intelligencer writes. "Other candidates polling in the single digits must be jealous."

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Jeva Lange was the executive editor at TheWeek.com. She formerly served as The Week's deputy editor and culture critic. She is also a contributor to Screen Slate, and her writing has appeared in The New York Daily News, The Awl, Vice, and Gothamist, among other publications. Jeva lives in New York City. Follow her on Twitter.