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The Data Crunching Prowess of Barack Obama
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."
When the President is re-elected, it will be because he's still far more charismatic and interesting than any current Republican contenders. I don't like his politics but I like him more than Romney, Perry, et al.
Are you honestly saying that the Presidential campaign is nothing but a popularity contest which has nothing to do with the merit of their respective political views or actions? I am... totally not shocked, actually. The presidential campaign has become more or less just a popularity contest. Although I'm pretty sure that increasing his appeal to voters is precisely the point of this campaign.
Which is somewhat sad. The only reason data mining like this is useful is if you intend to modify your political basis towards what is popular. In other words, you aren't electing someone based on what their views are, you elect them based on what they think your views are. Frankly, I would rather politicians actually just came out and said what their views are... but apparently, that can't happen anymore. No, politicians will now be elected based on how well they can adapt themselves to what Internet commentators say. That seems to me to be the point of Obama's campaign tools, anyways. Unfortunately, this does not make for good presidential candidates. Good presidents tend to know themselves what needs to be done and do what they think is right, not what the masses think. Because honestly? The masses are idiots, no matter how intelligent they may be individually.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
I would say, that for the period I've been alive, that the less politicians show of their beliefs, the more advantageous it is for them. They can be amiable and pretend to agree with you and be just as nice to the next guy with completely different viewpoints. The less they show their cards, the less people can pick out something to pick a fight with.
With the exception of Ron Paul, Dennis Kucinich, you'll have very few politicians spelling out where they stand and more just dance around it. Listen to debates or townhalls these days, or even past ones - they're an embarrassment. These people should be publicly bitch slapped every time they dance around the question, outright ignore it, or some other scheme where they pander to the electorate without actually really addressing the question. But they get away with it, people reward them with votes, and then bitch afterwards, which is meaningless.
You're seriously suggesting Newt Gingrich doesn't want to shove religion down our throats?
A really quick search (actually, I went to the Wikipedia page for Newt Gingrich and glanced through the citations at the bottom) turns up this. Scary stuff, and it's only the first article I looked at.
Also, isn't Newt a huge supporter of the Defense of Marriage Act? That's huge government forcing religion down our throats right there. And after he has been divorced a couple times! Hypocrite.
Romney, Huntsman and Gingrich should challenge Obama in the Democratic primary.
Strong Mad - 2008: "I PRESIDENT!"
> 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.
Does anyone else find this a little creepy?
In any case, I think the team may be making an assumption that will skew the numbers. They're not really measuring Obama supporters, they're measuring Obama supporters who are stupid enough to enter the security scorpion pit that is Facebook apps. This has to be a smaller, less technically minded subset of Obama's actual supporters.
Doesn't it?
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
ignorant? Ron Paul was a physician. Not only that, but an OB. He's hardly ignorant of reality on this issue.
My stance is that abortion IS slavery. The life of the child is 100% subject to the whim of the mother. Just as the life of the slave was subject to the whim of the owner. Further, if released from bondage, a slave's natural state was to become a free individual, as just a few months down the road, the child's natural state would also be as a free individual. Both enter the state of slavery through no fault of their own, and both had societies at large capable of absorbing them.
The problem arises when you try and narrow down a range of acceptability for the culling of the child. That child might be just a few cells large, but fetal viability fast approaches and the time for making the decision passes quickly. The point is that the state should be the body that decides at what point the process can occur, if at all, or where viability is marked. Most states do limit the activity, but they're restricted from eliminating it completely (except presumably for medical necessity) by the federal law.
That's exactly the MO of a religious nut. All of the craziest psycho religious people I know change religions frequently.