When you see Bernie's huge crowds consider how many volunteers can be recruited for the campaign

This weekend it is looking like Bernie Sanders is going to attract more huge crowds, but this time those huge crowds will be in the red states of Arizona and Texas which the naysayers insisted Bernie had no support in.

The pundits will no doubt be telling us that crowd sizes don't translate to votes, but they could not be any more wrong. These huge crowds are going to win millions of votes for Bernie and this is how they will do it.

The Sanders campaign is not just holding these rallies to get people to cheer for their candidate, they are using these rallies to build an army of volunteers. At all of these rallies they have people going around with clipboards and signing people up to get involved in the campaign.

I was at the rally in Minneapolis last month when they signed me up to volunteer and I was not alone. They signed up hundreds of people at that event who have already participated in activities with the campaign. There are already plans to bus Minnesotans down to Iowa to door knock and get people out to the caucuses, the names that were gathered at that rally are going to help to fill multiple buses of people to Iowa. The Sanders campaign has already built a large organization in the state and the Minneapolis rally played a large part in building that organization.

The event in Phoenix will be particularly important as it is happening at the same time as Netroots Nation and will be attended by many bloggers and people who have a lot of influence on social media. If you can get the bloggers enthused and you can get social media to spread those blogs that means the campaign gets some great free advertising.

These rallies are building large networks of volunteers as well as a lot of free advertising through social media, anyone who tries to tell you that will not translate to votes is flat out wrong.