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The Data Crunchers Who Helped Win The Election
concealment sends in a story at Time that goes behind the scenes with the team of data crunchers that powered many of the Obama campaign's decisions in the lead-up to the election. From the article:
"For all the praise Obama's team won in 2008 for its high-tech wizardry, its success masked a huge weakness: too many databases. Back then, volunteers making phone calls through the Obama website were working off lists that differed from the lists used by callers in the campaign office. Get-out-the-vote lists were never reconciled with fundraising lists. It was like the FBI and the CIA before 9/11: the two camps never shared data. ... So over the first 18 months, the campaign started over, creating a single massive system that could merge the information collected from pollsters, fundraisers, field workers and consumer databases as well as social-media and mobile contacts with the main Democratic voter files in the swing states. The new megafile didn't just tell the campaign how to find voters and get their attention; it also allowed the number crunchers to run tests predicting which types of people would be persuaded by certain kinds of appeals. Call lists in field offices, for instance, didn't just list names and numbers; they also ranked names in order of their persuadability, with the campaign's most important priorities first. About 75% of the determining factors were basics like age, sex, race, neighborhood and voting record. Consumer data about voters helped round out the picture. 'We could [predict] people who were going to give online. We could model people who were going to give through mail. We could model volunteers,' said one of the senior advisers about the predictive profiles built by the data. 'In the end, modeling became something way bigger for us in '12 than in '08 because it made our time more efficient.'"
creepy.
I don't get involved in politics these days, but I'm still registered as a Republican. As a consequence, I still get political calls and mail from time to time. The one thing I've noticed about how the GOP operates is that they make a lot of assumptions about what I think on various issues. It's like they cannot fathom that I might look at things a little bit differently than the party line. After reading this article, it makes me wonder if the GOP is out of touch with other voters who lean to the right.
It sounds like the Democrats have put a lot of effort into understanding their electorate.
Proverbs 21:19
than a president who understands technology and has been in charge of groups manipulating and using big data.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
....that candidates are winning elections via data mining versus appealing to people with ideas?
It seems like Wall Street's version of capitalism -- just focus on the numbers, not on making a newer widget, and we can manipulate our way to victory.
I know, you can make the argument that sending the right message to the people receptive that message will get you money, votes, whatever, but at the same time it seems cynical and manipulative. It doesn't seem like it's about developing leadership ideas that appeal to people generally and winning them over with charisma and the strength of your arguments.
It simply makes me sigh and wonder again when The American People[tm] will come to its senses and get themselves a voting system that's less paralysable by a mere two parties and effectively disenfranchises just a hair short of half the voters.
But since the message of the founding fathers has been lost in the process of elevating them to sainthood (or rather, by commercialising their vague memory), the answer is probably "never".
Which makes the claims of this country being a democracy (or a republic, or both), all the more bitter.
Plus he seemed to have lost a huge amount of the support he had in 2008.
Maybe that's because he had done a 180 degree turn on most of his promises? The ones that got that huge amount of support in 2008? Campaigning on "change and hope" was no longer possible, since we now have 4 years of actual record.
a win is a win... but looking at it objectively a sigh of relief is more appropriate than a cry of victory.
Republicans had a chance, but they needed a stronger candidate. Why is it so hard to find one strong candidate? I mean, look at who Romney was competing against at the end -- Gingrich, McCain, Santorum...
I wonder how large this database was compared to Romney's Orca. http://washingtonexaminer.com/stunned-romney-supporters-struggle-to-explain-defeat/article/2512861#.UJqIxRh8zOU The article said the system crashed. I'm pretty sure that's the system Karl Rove was looking at when he was on Fox News trying to rebut their analysts' projection of an Obama victory in Ohio. http://www.mediaite.com/tv/karl-rove-causes-fox-news-chaos-by-challenging-obama-victory-projection/
...moving us closer and closer to psychohistory.
i ~ Celebrating Science, Cyberspace, Speculation
First off, Obama did what he could with a Republican party that wanted nothing more than for him to lose his second term. Dont believe me? They even said this.
Secondly, the Republican party is full of nut jobs and puppets. The last few candidates that the Republicans presented were such big shills (including Bush), that you could clearly see the strings that were being pulled to make them talk.
Third, stop lying to make the Republican party look good. We have something now called the internet, and despite the large amount of false data out there, the real data (and recordings) remain.
Finally, Stop taking the USA citizens for rubes. We are smart, educated, and intelligent, something the Republican Party has feared for years. We believe that even though people can and given the chance, will pull up their bootstraps, sometimes they need help to get started. Not everyone has an extended family, a rich uncle, or someone who knows the right people to get us started. Society is not socialism, it is caring about your neighbors and helping out. THis includes neighbors I dont know and will never meet. I sanction my government to help those that need help, and try its best to find those that would work this to their own personal benefit.
Adapt or die, as some of your party members might say.
Works for me!
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
part of the problem is that the Republican party is being held hostage by a small fringe who want to put in place a theocracy.
Only squeaked by? Are you serious?
Surely you weren't persuaded by the media hype about how close the race is. It has never been close. Obama has had a huge advantage in the electoral college from the get-go. And the Romney campaign never had the ground organization in the battleground states that would be required to be a serious contender.
In fact, it almost looks like the Republicans threw the race on purpose. Romney is not the kind of candidate who would have a great chance of beating Obama in this climate--he epitomizes everything that people dislike about the Republican party, and plays into the Democrat characterization of the GOP as the party for the rich, by the rich.
In fact, there hasn't really been a strong candidate put up against an incumbent President since Reagan beat Carter. Clinton was not expected to win--but Perot's entering the race spoiled expectations.
Yes, we Americans should get a much more logical political system, like the British. Maybe if we had a House of Lords and a royal family, we'd finally enter the 18th century.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
Because there are few rational members of that party left. The Republican party caters to the extreme right, just watch the primaries, it was a contest of who is the craziest. The Republican party is dead and it time for a third party to emerge.
Unfortunately, that sort of shift requires constitutional changes, which is a Really Big Deal in process, support, and cost. Plus, the 2 principal parties have no incentive to do that.
If I recall correctly, some of the founding fathers were later arguing for a more proportional system, seeing a 2-party convergence even in their time.
Important distinction - "A party that wanted for him to lose" vs "A party that wanted nothing more than for him to lose".
When "make sure the other guy loses" is the over-riding objective, above any other goal, you stop doing things that would make sense if you wanted to get anything done, because getting things done might make the other guy look good. You stop doing things that would make sense to advance your own (original) agenda, where it overlaps with the other guy, because agreeing with the other guy makes him look good and might allow him to achieve something.
It turns everything into a game of tribal warfare - no compromise, no co-operation, just blind hate and contrarian obstruction. Being anything so long as it puts the other guy down or makes his life difficult. That's pretty much the impression I get of a good chunk of the republican party for the last 4 years, and thankfully it hasn't proved to be a winning strategy. If all you had to do to win an election was to block everything the incumbent tries to do (then lambast him for never doing anything), then the USA would be stuck fruitlessly spinning its gears forever.
Maybe now that's been shown to be a dud they'll start working for the common good of the people being governed, rather than treating ideas (and laws) as soldiers in an imaginary war. Maybe. That is perhaps optimistic though; equally likely they double down on the obstructionist crap, especially given how much the far right has supplanted the centre right.
One of their callers let it slip what my "ranking" was. For some reason they think I'm a strong democrat. I'm not sure what they think that means because if the Republicans would ever get their act together and field a Strong Moderate Republican like Powell then I'd vote Republican. Instead they've taken the last decade purging out moderates and acting crazy. Someone failed to consolidate those database though. If they had done it right then they would know they called my home phone, and cell phone. You only have to confirm that I'm voting once, maybe twice. After that I ether am voting or I've been Joshing you. But no, I got about 13 calls from them. Each campaign needs to share data so I don't get inundated by the local legislature, house and presidential campaign. I can't imagine what actual battle ground states actually got since I'm in an area where the winner could have been called a year before the election.
.
Voting record? I thought we had secret ballots in this country and that no one is supposed to have access to individual voters' voting records? Do they mean simply registration records and if they voted in a particular election?
And it seemed worrisome that the government would tabulate this infomation on us so they outlawed it; then they found the loophole that while the gov't couldn't compile the data, private companies could, and then the gov't can look at the private companies' data and still proclaim they never broke the law. "Brave New World", indeed...
Obonga is gonna bankrupt this nation and let the mud races defile white women as your slavery reparations payment, too. Now that he has now political accountability you will see his true colors shine through.
Well, if the alternative is having the nation led by the people a bigoted simpleton like yourself would vote for, I'd say we came out ahead.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
No, helping the country be better, and the citizen be better off is.
Aka: Leading the country.
Getting elected is a MEANS, it is not the end.
And this doesn't frighten ANY of the privacy advocates here on slashdot? Were this any other government organization people would be screaming to the hills, so why is Obama given a free pass for this sort of privacy incursions?
tora
Yes, we Americans should get a much more logical political system, like the British. Maybe if we had a House of Lords and a royal family, we'd finally enter the 18th century.
The Queen has a very limited constitutional role that very seldom comes into play. If she did anything outrageous it'd be the end of the monarchy's popularity and the end of the monarchy (the Prime Minister can demand an abdication), so she has to follow the public mood.
The House of Lords can only delay legislation and send it back to the Commons, and its track record of providing corrective feedback and constructive improvements to bills is actually pretty good.
House of Commons Select Committees scrutinize every bit of legislation line-by-line before it can proceed. Is there a similar system in the US Capitol or is it true that most of the people voting on bills in the house don't actually read them?
Members of the British cabinet have to be elected to Parliament, not simply appointed. Nobody gets to be Prime Minister without years of fighting his (or her) way to the front benches, so whoever makes it to the front has a pretty good idea of how the system works by the time they get there.
Since the executive branch is taken from the legislative branch, a government with a decent sized mandate can actually get stuff done. And then of course there's Prime Minister's questions every Wednesday, where the PM gets a good solid grilling. Could you have imagined Dubya surviving for five minutes in a pit like that?
Since the head of state (the monarch) is a different person from the executive leader of the country (the Prime Minister) then people can honour the head of state and be as patriotic as they like while treating their political leaders with utter contempt and ousting them when they put a foot wrong. None of this "don't dare criticise the President in a time of war" nonsense. And if the government really does screw up badly enough then a vote of confidence in the Commons can force an election at any time, no staring at the clock waiting for a 4-year term to finish. And if you do happen to get a decent PM then he (or she) gets to stay in office for as long as the people are content for that government to remain, not be ousted at the end of an arbitrary term limit.
The parliamentary system isn't perfect (what system is?) but it sure as shit has a lot going for it. And since the UK had a female PM before a lot of people on /. were born, maybe you should hold your fire on gloating about how progressive the US system is until Hillary gets back into the White House, this time as President.
Carry on.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
... the data crunchers with the help of the spying on Americans and MSM entertainment control were able to figure out exactly how to manipulate many things to achieve the goal of what they were hired to do. To cause the voters to believe they actually voted the way it was said to have.
Fact is voter turnout was the lowest it has been at least as far back as prior to 1948 election perhaps further back.
Obama trailed at roughly under 1 million for most of the tally and then was approx 1.5 million behind Romney in popular vote when declared the winner.
So with less that 50% of eligible voters voting .....the people did not elect anyone. But hey it made for a sports style event with teh last minute tally comeback.
This was not a sports event!
Given the political bias I have seen on slashdot.... I do expect this to be moderated troll.... But that not like our election voting.... is it?
So what are you saying? A non-voter should count as a Romney voter? Obama lost?
Take your beating like a man, you self-pitying twerp.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
Republican candidate issues can (mostly) be placed at the feet of the Republican party. The only person who could possibly fit through their obstacle course was Romney, only because he was the best in changing positions (a/k/a outright lying about what he really was).
Case in point: Christie post-Sandy. The fact he actually praised Obama for helping his state, and Christie doing the job he's supposed to (helping his electorate) gets him skewered in the press. Any remotely moderate candidate for office gets a hard-core conservative Republican challenger in the primaries. The fact that Republicans have to deal with: the current system for vetting candidates makes them appeal to a hard core conservative wing that hurts them in any nationwide election. You may be able to get Texas to be vote for God and guns, but you're running in 50 states.
The fault is not in (y)our stars, but in (y)ourselves.
Really? He won all the same states he did in 2008 except for NC and IN.
This is certainly as good, or better, a "mandate" than Bush received in 2004.
"I've earned political capital, and I intend to spend it"
--W, 2004
With the first link, the chain is forged.
I thought representing their constituent's interests was their job, even if they spend 0% of their time on it.
Learn to love Alaska
Clinton was not expected to win--but Perot's entering the race spoiled expectations.
Maybe it was different in the swing states, but in Texas, everyone voting for Perot I talked to would have otherwise have voted for Clinton. On the Republican scale, Perot is a left-wing nutjob. He wanted fiscal responsibility, something Clinton actually gave us (even if the Republicans assert it was only luck that he sat on a boom that busted under Bush). He also wasn't nearly interested enough in the bedroom habits of people to be a "good Republican."
Learn to love Alaska
Sadly, the short term problem is that obstructionism will at least appear to work in the next 2 years. 2 years from now, the voters who were willing to wait 4 - 6 hours in line to vote for Obama won't be willing to stick it out for a midterm. And one guess on the social groups that had to wait 4 hours to vote. The Democrats will lose many of their gains in the last election and the hardline (Tea Party) Republicans will conclude that their no surrender tactics are working and further that the reason they lost 2012 is because the party selected a wishy-washy conservative in Romney.
I am sad to say my prediction is very minimal compromise in the short term and further purges of moderates, especially moderate Republicans, for the next 4 years. Eventually the Republicans will have to change course, they just can’t/won’t that soon.
Buckle up, we are in for a bumpy ride.
That's pretty twisted logic you have going there (or possibly an unorthodox definition of "disenfranchised"), taken to it's logical conclusion the only vote that counts is the single ballot that gets someone over the line. Truth is all the votes counted, the Rommney total was simply insufficient and the Obama total was more than required. US domestic politics has ( in my lifetime) always been highly polarised, which is kind of odd given the diverse sub-cultures found in the different states/regions, simply tweeking the election rules isn't going to change that cultural paradox.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Are you saying that there aren't local governments in the UK? Because that's not correct in the slightest.
Or are claiming that the landmass of a nation determines when it can be successful as a monarchy? Because Canada is larger than the US, and functions well enough with a queen and parliamentary system very similar to the UK.
Or are you claiming that it's population size that determines if a monarchy could work as a form of government? Claiming it doesn't scale with population is as ridiculous as claiming that counting ballots by hand doesn't scale in large populations -- the arguments just make no sense.
Stop taking the USA citizens for rubes. We are smart, educated, and intelligent, something the Republican Party has feared for years.
Well said, I agree with Christopher Hicthens who thought putting Palin up for VP was a genuine insult to intelligence of "the people". Isn't the conservative side of politics supposed to shun shallow air-heads? Are they not supposed to hang on to established institutions rather than openly call for their abolishment? Was Nixon a commie because he didn't veto the clean air act? Was reagan a wetermellon becuse he pushed for and obtained an international cap and trade treaty for sulphur emissions which has been credited with significantly reducing the threat from acid rain?
;)
Having grown up in the 60-70's the Tea Party's sucessful hijacking of the conservative brand name has left me speechless, how border line support for anarchy and a total disregard for well-established facts could be interpreted as 'conservative' is beyond me? Go back pre-911 and have a look at the senior republicans, where are the moderate right wingers in today's line up? - Oh wait....I think I get it now.....you guys just elected a moderate conservative as president, well done!
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
"small fringe" is sadly not, to my mind, a plausible interpretation of the evidence
When you look at many votes on questions touched on by the theocrats, it's pretty clear that they enjoy substantial support from large segments and often majorities of the GOP electorate.
I'm very sorry that the somewhat more sensible Republican party of the past is no longer with us. But that's the case, and it's time for people who supported a more sensible GOP to either figure out a way of more effectively persuading people to your view (because the theocrats are winning that war, despite last night's results), or, alternatively, get themselves a more sensible party of their own.
I'm a nature photographer.
Yes, only squeaked by. Almost 120 million people voted. If around 130,000 of those - ~50K in VA, ~55K in OH, and ~25K in Florida - had switched to Romney, the outcome would have been a Romney presidency. That's less than 1.5% of VA, less than 1.1% of OH, less than 0.4% of FL, and less than 0.011% of the national vote.
Nate Silver tried hard to correct your misconception:
And a close election is what we had. That the outcome could be predicted with fairly good certainty doesn't mean it wasn't close.
Behind in the popular vote for most of the tally... sure, because the west coast has an very high population, and every state in the coast votes for the Democrats more often than not. Therefore, the popular vote will always look to favor the republican candidate, barring an absolute Dem. landslide that we've not seen in our lifetimes.
And really, complaining about a low turnout when most elections have a winner-take-all approach is rather naive. If a race is is not in a dead heat, chances that a presidential vote will matter in the slightest are near zero. Same thing when picking a congressman. How motivated are republicans to go vote in California? How about democrats in Utah? If anything, we are seeing too high a turnout for the electoral system being used.
Then again, complaining about low turnout is a great excuse when the end result of the election is something you do not like.
Because they think they need to be more conservative, more hard-line in order to appeal to the religious nuts and hard-core racist wingnuts. Seriously.
If there were a party that was fiscally conservative but didn't hate minorities and spout off bugfuck insane Ayn Rand nonsense they would probably do well.
A republican candidate who didn't repudiate science, go all Jesusy at the drop of a hat, and who was willing to say that fixating on restricting the rights of a tiny (but potent) minority was a waste of fucking time, and who was willing to actually call out wingnuts who acted like assholes would do well.
In fact, he has - Take the D for after his name and look just at his policies and Obama is pretty much an Eisenhower republican with more modersocial sensibilities.
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
The Left didn't win because of organization. The Left won because the Right is intolerant of the Moderate (at least the hard-core Left learned to keep quiet, for the most part), making Left looks like more accommodating to the Moderate than the Right. And Moderate don't like being push out of the circle.
I kind of prefer the refreshing taste of straight-up racism. Much more honest than the veiled and coded kind that every GOP voter (apart from the ones like you) subscribes to.
I am sad to say my prediction is very minimal compromise in the short term and further purges of moderates, especially moderate Republicans, for the next 4 years. Eventually the Republicans will have to change course, they just can’t/won’t that soon.
For the sake of our country I sincerely hope your prediction is not our future. As a moderate Republican I will have no choice but to keep voting for Democrates, straight down the ballot. I will keep on doing this until more Republican leaders emerges (and survives). I think many moderates (Republican or Democrats) in this country share my point of view.
The 1937878 are a mathematical artifact. Even if 1937878 votes were superfluous (they're not, because they prevented endless court battles if the outcome had been in doubt), they didn't get disenfranchised. The guy they voted for won.
You're right on the rest, more or less, if you use the "deprived of power" definition rather than "right to vote" (which they clearly used).
But there's no way around that, electoral college or not, because there is only one Oval Office. You can only put one guy into it, and anywhere from zero to 49.9% of the voters (assuming a popular majority) have to suck it up. That's the case in every democracy with an elected leader - but when you compare the electoral processes of those other countries, you find that nowhere else do the losing voters routinely get this angry and disillusioned about it.
Why? Part of it is that you give the chief executive a hell of a lot of responsibility for one person. You've got him as head of state, head of government, head of the military, giving him the power to veto every law, appoint judges, etcetera.
Even more of the power is symbolic, and deeply ingrained in the public mind. Everyone knows that in theory the US president can't do much without the agreement of congress, but everyone also "knows" that the government and the nation is headed for disaster for four years whenever someone from the "enemy party" gets into the White House. That during those four years the only thing keeping the country from collapsing is a congress controlled by your own party blocking everything the president does, putting the government in a deadlock. (Vice versa, when your party takes the presidency, the most important thing is to take congress as well to prevent the "enemy party" from blocking everything.)
But the US congress is much more important than a group that either backs up or holds down the president depending on party colors. It's the actual decision-making part of the government, presidential powers notwithstanding. So what reduces them, in the public mind, to the president's backup-dancers/leash-holders? Out of 535 seats, all but two belong to one of the two parties (yours or the great enemy's), and the rest are just nominally independent.
The UK currently has over a dozen parties with seats (a coalition of over ten controlling one house with two in opposition, and vice versa); France has over six in both chambers; Germany has six in the Bundestag (three in government, three in opposition). These people have to compromise each and every day to get any work done. Promising to "reach across the aisle" in campaigns would be as likely as "coming in on time" or "showing up to work in a suit". They fight like hellcats, but every single person who voted for one of them knows that their voice is represented in government regardless of who is president or chancellor or prime minister or whatever. Even the ones with a single seat. You don't have people holding their nose and voting for Team Red because otherwise Team Blue might be in charge, because both will have to cooperate with Team Yellow and Team Green to get anywhere.
"The Left" didn't win. Try Europe for "The Left". The less batshit-mental right won.
The Royal Family is always under scrutiny if it does try to influence policies. At the moment the Prince of Wales is being put under a mganifying glass because of his lobbying for his numerous social causes. The Queen only comes into play when things have gone terribly wrong. What a King/Queen can and can't do has been determined under the Stuarts(one got his head lobbed off, the other had to flee from an orange).
And that was quite some time ago. Just to boggle the mind for a bit Edward Longshanks had to call in a parliament to raise taxes for his wars. That's the guy you might know from that Braveheart movie that was so popular a couple of years ago. I repeat: Edward the First of England, one of the most autocratic monarchs the country ever saw, had to form a parliament to get things done. And he wasn't the first who had to do just that. "No taxation without representation" is a very old, very English principle.
Simon de Montfort, who had ousted Edward's daddy for a year or so, even went so far to have non-nobles and fat cats sit in his parliament. Not entirely democratic but at least somewhat elected. And that was mid-13th century. There's a reason why he has a spot on a wall in the US House of Representatives dedicated to him. Stuff like that tends to linger. And once you went there you can't go back.
20 minutes into the future
Well, you'll have to be fair. With the installation of Obamacare they have entered the 19th century. The pink leftie Otto von Bismarck introduced Mandatory Health Insurance for low incomes and the arch-communist Kaiser Wilhelm the First smiled on it.
20 minutes into the future