The Data Crunching Prowess of Barack Obama 334
Hugh Pickens writes "Micah Sifry, co-founder of the Personal Democracy Forum, writes that Barack Obama may be struggling in the polls and even losing support among his core boosters, but when it comes to the modern mechanics of identifying, connecting with and mobilizing voters, as well as the challenge of integrating voter information with the complex internal workings of a national campaign, Obama's data analysis team is way ahead of the Republican pack. Alone among the major candidates running for president, the Obama campaign not only has a Facebook page with 23 million 'likes' (roughly 10 times the total of all the Republicans running), it has a Facebook app that is scooping up all kinds of juicy facts about his supporters and inside the Obama operation, his staff members are using a powerful social networking tool called NationalField, which enables everyone to share what they are working on. 'The holy grail of data analysis is data harmonization, or master data management,' says Alex Lundry, a Republican data-mining expert at TargetPoint Consulting. 'To have political talking to finance and finance talking to field, and data is flowing back and forth and informing the actions of each other — it sounds easy, but it's incredibly hard to implement.' Sifry writes that if the 2012 election comes down to a battle of inches, where a few percentage points change in turnout in a few key states making all the difference, we may come to see Obama's investment in predictive modelers and data scientists as the key to victory."
All this shows (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Interesting... (Score:5, Insightful)
Or, you need the opposing party to pick a lunatic. With the Tea Party and the religious conservatives in the GOP trying to smash Romney to bits at every opportunity, the possibility that the Republicans may in fact deliver Obama is victory cannot be discounted.
Re:All this shows (Score:5, Insightful)
And call me old fashioned, but wasn't politics supposed to be about politicians spelling out their policies and views, and us voting for someone whose principles and policies we agree with? You know, a process with some integrity?
Not a whole bunch of refinements based on popular opinion until there's nothing left but a living, breathing popularity poll....
Maybe I'm just naive.
Facebook likes are not enough (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:All this shows (Score:2, Insightful)
And as long as Obama supporters continue to mount absolutely absurd ad hominem attacks on conservatives, they will be even more motivated to come out and vote him out.
We have mainstream media attacking Herman Cain as a racist or "race traitor", whatever the hell that means. Not only is that foolish, it's fodder for existing conservatives and highly offensive to a good fraction of existing African-American Democratic voters.
Obama and Co. may (but probably aren't, I'm not going to even bother skewering the original puffpeice FA) good data miners, they are very severely tone-deaf, and their ever-more-desperate supporters are his worst enemy.
But by all means, carry on....
Brett
Re:All this shows (Score:4, Insightful)
There are complete dickbags on both sides. Being dickbags alone does not make them traitors.
Re:All this shows (Score:2, Insightful)
The ultimate destiny of Democratic Process is Political Marketing. The ultimate destiny of Tyranny is a Revolution.
Choose one of the two.
Re:All this shows (Score:4, Insightful)
Except that's not actually a definition of treason.
You won't find a bigger critic of the Tea Party than me, but calling them traitors is absurd.
And about that thingy called the "law" (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Interesting... (Score:5, Insightful)
Likewise, there is a large block that will always vote for the republican candidate even if he is an adulterer, or a drug addict, or porn star, or a tax collector, as long as he says he is a christian conservative now. There is a large block that will always vote for the democratic candidate even if he supports taxing the poor into oblivion. The key then is to identify the districts that enough independent voters to make a difference. Alternatively one can register voters that otherwise would not vote because they know that it really makes no difference. Either party is going to steal from the poor and give to the rich, as was shown with the car bailout that was supported by Bush and Obama.
So the republicans can often win just by, like Perry and Romney do and Bush and Reagan did, pretending to be christian and conservative and racking in the votes. Pray, thank god, tell a teary story, and rake in the cash. However democrats actually have to do work, find the key districts, get the people registered, convince them that helping others is the best way to help themselves(do unto others as you would have them...) and hope that one can squeak by. Obama did a masterful job of this, and, along with the help of Palin, won many districts. This time he will not likely have the help of people like Palin, or Bachman, and at the point of the real election no one will saying Romney is not a christian, so it will be a harder election.
The election, if won by Obama, will be won on the margins, district by district, registering voters in key states. If you do not believe this, then why are republicans making it harder to register voters rather than easier? If one says to prevent voter fraud, then one has drank the republican kool aid and really mean nothing to either party. There are not enough fundamentalist to win an election, so fundamentalist have no individual power.