Para Bellum Labs Will Attempt To Make the RNC a Political-Analytics Player 212
Nerval's Lobster writes "President Obama's 2012 re-election campaign relied on a sophisticated data-analytics platform that allowed organizers and volunteers to precisely target potential donors and voters. The centerpiece of that effort was Project Narwhal, which brought voter information—steadily accumulated since Obama's 2008 campaign—onto a single platform accessible to a growing number of campaign-related apps. The GOP has only a few short years to prepare for the next Presidential election cycle, and the party is scrambling to build an analytics system capable of competing against whatever the Democrats deploy onto the field of battle. To that end, the Republican National Committee (RNC) has launched Para Bellum Labs, modeled after a startup, to produce digital platforms for election analytics and voter engagement. Is this a genuine attempt to infuse the GOP's infrastructure with data science, or merely an attempt to show that the organization hasn't fallen behind the Democratic Party when it comes to analytics? Certainly the "Welcome to Para Bellum Labs" video posted by the RNC gives the impression of a huge office staffed with data scientists and programmers. However, the creation of a muscular digital ecosystem hinges on far more than building a couple of apps. Whatever the GOP rolls out, it'll face a tough opponent in the Democratic opposition, which will almost certainly emulate the robust IT infrastructure that the Obama campaign instituted in 2012 (not to mention Obama's massive voter and donor datasets). From that perspective, Para Bellum Labs might face the toughest job in politics."
Umm, guys... (Score:5, Interesting)
Parabellum (Score:4, Interesting)
Hmmm. What message are they giving here?
Parabellum, n
Definition: a type of semiautomatic pistol or machine-gun; also called Luger, also written parabellum
Etymology: Latin 'for war'
Re:Waste of Time (Score:5, Interesting)
A lot of the Republicans Cluelessness is based on bad data. The main issue is that the Republicans are supporting the base of the groups that yell the loudest, and think they are supporting a majority.
Part (there are other reasons too but that will get onto political rambling) of the reason why Kerry Lost to Bush, is because the Democrats didn't collect their data as well as the Republicans, and let the Liberal Crazies push the agenda, making Kerry look out of touch, while the Republicans seemed to more controlled and moderate.
The democrats haven't been winning by huge landslides either. A small tweak from the Republicans stance, say being more open to Gay Marriage, or actually getting their act together on a good immigration policy could be enough to change the tide.
Sure most of us Slashdotters are based in Blue States, with a strong blue influence. But there are plenty of moderates out there who may be right leaning except for that one particular issue. and if the Republicans find that issue they could get in control.
Re:Waste of Time (Score:2, Interesting)
Based on polls, Republicans are almost always the minority party, because they advocate positions that benefit the minority and harm the majority. Their electoral victories come from discouraging voting by the majority so that the committed minority can win.
Of course, because they've painted themselves into a corner and cannot imagine that their policies are the reason for their failures, they have to keep trying various tactics to "win" despite public opposition. But until they believe that they need to change, they can't change, and will keep losing.
Though if tactics such as gerrymandering and voter suppression continue to be allowed to succeed, then they'll never change.
Re:Waste of Time (Score:5, Interesting)
The democrats haven't been winning by huge landslides either. A small tweak from the Republicans stance, say being more open to Gay Marriage, or actually getting their act together on a good immigration policy could be enough to change the tide.
Dems are not winning by a landslide, that is true. The moment GOP moderates its stance it is going to lose a bulk of the moonbat crazy right wing that was preventing the Dem landslides. People who would prefer moderation immigration or gay issue are not going to switch in sufficient numbers to make up for the loss of crazy right wing. GOP has been riding the tiger. They have been trading away large number of moderate voters,( but whose voter turn out rate is low) to pursue the crazy nutjobs, who have smaller number but make up for it in voter turn out. But there is a limit to how much mileage you can get out of them. All that gerry mandering, bias in politics for small states with two senators each, natural accretion of dems in dense urban blocks, liberals in small red towns/counties/state moving to friendlier anonymous cities etc etc have all been exhausted to the limit. They have painted themselves into this corner, it is not easy to dig out of that hole (forgive my mixed metaphors).
Re:Waste of Time (Score:4, Interesting)
The problem the Republicans have, which is the reason Obama won by a landslide but the Republican party polls were predicting a win for Romney is a problem of demographics. For the first time in history the young are voting, millennial are voting by wide margins. The Republican polls took the view of history that even if the young said they would vote to a poll they actually wouldn't end up voting whereas the other polls predicting Obama's win took their statement at face value. They are the reason Obama was elected in both 2012 and 2008. The bad part for republicans is that the millennial numbers keep growing and by the end of the decade their voter numbers are projected to be higher than both GenX and the Baby boomers.
That is what should scare the every loving bejesus out of Republicans. You have an entire generation that is voting close to 80% democratic, that has larger voting numbers than previous generations and is voting young. There is a real possibility we're going to go into a era of total dominance by the democratic party for the next 30 years not unlike that caused by the great depression.