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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."
Is he's good at campaigning. Nobody has ever disputed that nor has he stopped campaigning since he won. He still sucks at presidenting.
Yeah, reading the field will only get you so far. It's one thing to propose all sorts of hopes and dreams for your first term, but to be re-elected, you need to actually achieve something with your policies. Make of Obama's record there what you will.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
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.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Disclaimer: I am NOT choosing sides in this post.
The notion that the Obama team is the only one in the prospective 2012 race to understand data mining and acting on numbers is pretty shallow. Rick Perry has a well documented (and apparently very well run) data mining team that he has used in the past and would no doubt use again in a presidential bid... More info here: http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/08/22/rick-perrys-scientific-campaign-method/ and here: http://www.thevictorylab.com/ and in this E-book: http://www.amazon.com/Rick-Perry-His-Eggheads-ebook/dp/B005HE8ED4
Rick Perry's campaign, for instance, is well-known for using social-science methods to rigorously test various campaign tools, including controlled experiments on what actually worked and what didn't.
As, as long as we're talking about Perry, you know that "Perry cut firefighters budgets" story that went around a month ago? It's not true. The Texas legislature authorized, and Perry signed, an 80% increase in wildfire fighting and prevention funding for the 2012-2013 biennium.
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
I'm not convinced either. We actually host and manage several political websites for various groups, mostly conservative organizations (We're politically neutral, as long as it isn't inflammatory we'll host just about anything). Many of the member's of these groups will click 'Like' on things they don't really like, just so they can share it with their circle of friends, not because they actually agree with the content of a certain page. I see this all the time in their feeds. I wonder how many of those 23 million 'likes' were done by people trying to share the page and shouldn't be taken as a sign of approval or support.
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
How do you know if a candidate is "liked" or "+1" because they'll vote for them in the election, or because they'll be easy to beat?
The Dali Lama has "recently" joined G+ and I've circled and +1'd him, because he is one of the very few "world leaders" I actually respect. That is an entirely different relationship from me +1'ing Palin because I think she is the most easy to beat out of the R field; +1 for being a humorous caricature in her field.
I suppose you could analyze my other +1s to figure out I don't want to throw my vote away on a D or R, and I'm gonna vote straight LP (unless RP is somehow on the ballot for the R in which case I'd hold my nose only a little tiny bit and vote for him). So maybe that data would show LP supporters think the best way for the R to lose is to put up Palin (or her cronies), or if they want LP supporters maybe they need a party plank that if they win RP will be the next (last?) chairman of the Fed. That might be actionable data, might not.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Now, if he hadn't spent the last 2.5 years largely doing exactly the opposite of what he campaigned on, angering his base to no end, he might be able to make better use of all of that data management. No amount of carefully worded campaign e-mails are going to convince me to vote for a President who has normalized extra-judicial assassinations of American citizens by the CIA.
Ceci n'est pas une sig.
Can this farce of a political system get any worse?
Oh Yeah, election by /. poll:
1) Bachmann/Palin
2) Obama/whoever the VP is today
3) Ron Paul write in
4) Cowboy Neal
5) Goatse man, because he understands what the financial industry is doing to America
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
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.
The "debates" are now hosted by the parties themselves instead of the League of Women Voters.
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/United_States_presidential_election_debates
So they're nothing more than a forum for the candidates to issue sound bites now.
The Democrats could, in theory, nominate a different candidate. In practice, it is very difficult to wrest the nomination away from an incumbent. At this stage of the presidential race, it would take a miracle for sufficient support to coalesce behind another candidate. The organization would take several months to build, by which time it would be too late. IMHO, the only candidate who would have even the remotest chance of pulling this off would be Hilary Clinton, who of course is SecState, so that's not going to happen.
For once Cowboy Neal isn't the joke vote!
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Ron Paul doesn't want to do any of that stuff you mentioned.
"Like" is meaningless unless there is a "hate" button.
And neither is the Goatse man.
Ignore this signature. By order.
Romney, Huntsman and Gingrich should challenge Obama in the Democratic primary.
Strong Mad - 2008: "I PRESIDENT!"
It's just a matter of picking my poison. If I vote left, I get some jackass preaching about saving mother earth and we're all in some syrupy Star Wars Force binding us all together, so I have to give up my money in the name of the cause and join in the mission to get rid of the evil right. If I vote right, I get some jackass preaching about saving culture and we're all god's children, so I have to give up my money in the name of the cause and join in the mission to get rid of the evil left.
This is my sig.
Frankly, I see several of the candidates promising to reduce government spending and I only see a few that are wearing religion on their sleeves. Romney is not one of them - in fact, any time he is asked about his religion he side steps the question. That topic has been hashed over plenty by Huckabee in 2008.
You do understand that his stance is to remove it from the federal level so the states can decide, right?
> 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.
What about the rights of the fetus? There is already legal precedant establishing those. If you kill a pregnant woman, you get charged with the death of both the woman and the fetus. As far as abortion is concerned, the States should decide what is legal and what isn't, not the Federal government.
The difference, since you're being obtuse for rhetorical reasons, is one group being singled out for the treatment.
Starting around middle school I stopped saying "under god".
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
Forgot to mention his statement on the pre-decided guilt of Bradley Manning, whom the commander-in-chief has illegally kept in jail when he is supposed to be granted a speedy courts-martial. And negative, Obama, the banksters did break the law: many millions of times over in filing millions of false affidavits (that equals millions of felonies) and falsely filing wrongful IRS reports (in violation of tax-exempt REMIC status), and millions of violations of Article 3 of the Uniform Commerical Code.
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.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
$400,000 guy pays 29% in taxes. His efforts contribute $117,314. $34,500 guy pays 13.7% in taxes. His efforts contribute $4,485. So, given actual math, I'm having a hard time understanding the rich not paying thier fair share. Since math is out, you have to go on emotion. It's not that you have a bad life, it that someone else has a better life. It's the only conclusion i can figure...
Those amendments merely qualified the position that the Bill of Rights were not subject to State usurpation. It has nothing to do with the breach of Federal power that occurred during and after the Civil war, which spat in the face of the 10th amendment.
Regardless of your position on the role of the Federal government, the 10th Amendment's pretty clear what is and is not Federal power... and yet the federal government continues to grow...
It's the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.
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 so silly that I have a hard time believing that you believe it.
Many evangelical Christians don't even consider Catholics to be Christian, citing the icons and saint worship as idolatrous and polytheistic. They also don't like the liturgy and the pomp of the services.
Gingrich's move was hardly a pragmatic political move, except inasmuch as no one is getting elected as a Republican as an atheist. He had to have a religion so he chose the one his wife liked. I'm sure he believes in a personal God, but I hardly can see him as any kind of religious freak.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Raising the minimum wage tends to both increase unemployment (since it cost more to hire people, businesses tend to hire fewer people), and increase the general cost of living across the board (again, logical if you think about it for just a moment).
Taking away 80% of investment income is insane. Investments are largely about providing capital to companies that wish to expand operations. This is a critical part of our economy, and disincentivizing a monetary return on already risky investments mean our economy will tank even further.
If simple solutions like these would actually fix the problems, I'd be all for it. The law of unintended consequences means you'd probably hurt working-class people more than the rich by doing this. Case example: The failure of the luxury tax.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
I get to disagree with them because I used to be one of them.
I used to be a libertarian (and a communist, and other things), then I grew up.
Toodles.
--
BMO
Ah, well. It is common in politics to elect the biggest asshole.
Ignore this signature. By order.
The states didn't enforce slavery, fugitive slave laws did. If the south had been allowed to secede, slavery wouldn't have lasted long.
You should check out the book "Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men" for a more nuanced understanding of slavery than what you've been taught in Lincoln-worshiping publik skools.
>80 column hard wrapped e-mail is not a sign of intelligent
>life
If 'released from bondage,' a fetus' natural state would be death.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz