Data Miners Liken Obama Voters To Caesars Gamblers

theodp writes "As Steve Wozniak publicly laments how government used new technologies he introduced in unintended ways to monitor people, the NY Times reports how the digital masterminds behind the Obama Presidential campaign are cashing in by bringing the secret, technologically advanced formulas used for reaching voters to commercial advertisers. 'The plan is to bring the same Big Data expertise that guided the most expensive presidential campaign in history to companies and nonprofits,' explains Civis Analytics, which is backed by Google Chairman and Obama advisor Eric Schmidt. Also boasting senior members of Obama's campaign team is Analytics Media Group (A.M.G.), which pitched that 'keeping gamblers loyal to Caesars was not all that different from keeping onetime Obama voters from straying to Mitt Romney.' The extent to which the Obama campaign used the newest tech tools to look into people's lives was largely shrouded, the Times reports, but included data mining efforts that triggered Facebook's internal safeguard alarms. ... 'We asked to see [voter's Facebook] photos but really we were looking for who were tagged in photos with you, which was a really great way to dredge up old college friends — and ex-girlfriends.' The Times also explains how the Obama campaign was able to out-optimize the Romney campaign on TV buys by obtaining set-top box TV show viewing information from cable companies for voters on the Obama campaign's 'persuadable voters' list. "

Comments

That's not why Obama won

[Anonymous Coward]

1) The Democrats had the better candidate, in the sense of being able to connect with voters on the campaign trail. Mitt Romney made one gaffe after another during the primary season, all showing how out of touch he was, so his campaign staff deliberately kept him off the trail for an entire critical month before the Republican convention. One more slip during the fall campaign - the "we had binders full of women" boast during the second debate, even more remarkable because it was clearly a planned talking point - reinforced all the doubts the independent voters had about him.

2) Immigration. Romney made a tactical decision (not personal) before the 2008 election to pander to the Republican base on the issue, as a way of answering any doubts about whether he was a conservative. He stuck to that course in 2012. He lost the pretty close to the entire Hispanic vote in the general election; other groups, including Asians and African Americans, were also apparently turned off by what appeared to be Romney's and the Republican Party's whites-only strategy.

3) While the economy was still relatively weak last November, Romney's ability to capitalize it was neutralized by the Bain Capital attacks started by Newt Gingrich and continued by the Democrats, and of course the fact that the housing and banking crisis and collapse of the economy occurred during Bush's watch with Bush's tax policies and Treasury/SEC administration.

Obama certainly had better IT, but that was far down on the list of factors.