Obama, Romney Data Scientists Strike Out On Their Own

dcblogs writes "The self-described nerds of President Obama's presidential campaign last year are back using big data analytics, this time to help Newark Mayor Cory Booker achieve a landside primary win Tuesday in the New Jersey Democratic primary for a vacant U.S. Senate seat. The data scientists from Obama and Romney campaigns recently formed their own consulting businesses within months of each other. The chief data scientist for Romney's campaign, Alex Lundry, co-founded Deep Root Analytics. He gives credit to the Obama campaign's data effort in 2012. But since last year's election, "what you are seeing is a flurry of activity on the right to make sure that we not only catch them, but surpass them," Lundry said. Meanwhile, the co-founder of BlueLabs, Chris Wegrzyn, a senior member of Obama's 2012 campaign analytics department, says last year was turning point for big data analytics in elections. "Usually the nerds in the back room don't warrant a great deal of attention, especially in politics," said Wegrzyn, "but the world is changing.""

Comments

Who would hire the Romney failures?

[vilanye]

There were so many voters that they didn't even know existed.

Anyone with the tiniest bit of intelligence knew Romney didn't have a chance to even make it close, much less win, yet Romney et.al. believed in their make believe statistics. Which is why they where throwing money away in WI and PA where they had zero chance when they were behind in OH,CO, IA and FL, places they at least had a decent shot at.

On the other hand, Obama's team was first class and knew exactly where to spend money, down to specific districts and won easily.

I know who I would hire.

Re:Who would hire the Romney failures?

[s.petry]

While correct that it works, it's a horrible and method that should be shunned. A campaign is not supposed to be about marketing, it's supposed to be about voting someone into office that will look out for the citizens best interests. You simply don't get that by voting for people based on fast-food type advertizing and giving away phones. Marketing gets you what we have for a President and House currently (and all the way back to the 70s), which has not been working very well.

Re:Who would hire the Romney failures?

[Antique Geekmeister]

Given that campaigning for political office was well described by Macchiavelli in his book "The Prince", published 1532, it seems to have been a fundamental part of politics and of any leadership since the the invention of the printing press. I think we can safely say it's built into human society.

Re:Who would hire the Romney failures?

[s.petry]

The inventor of the Republic wisely stated "The success of the Republic requires that the citizens are highly educated." and "In order for a Republic to succeed a Political class of citizens must be guarded against.". I'm not sure why you would promote a book that was either satire against self proclaimed nobles abusing citizens or a lesson book for abuse, over "The Republic".

Simply because something was written should not mean it has to match reality. Pardon me for an abrupt departure, those pesky Hobbits are digging up my carrots again.

Re:Who would hire the Romney failures?

[Tablizer]

Whaddya expect from a species that just evolved from poo-flinging apes? The flinging never went away, just changed delivery mechanism.

Why only if votes are on the line?

[Anonymous Coward]

What annoys the hell out of me is that politians can be so scientific when collecting votes but never when actually discussing policy? Then it's always slogans and 'gotchas' and extremely superficial crap. Why never discuss the economy in detail? Get the numbers and try to figure out what they mean?

The media doesn't help much either. Why can they explain these statistics about voters in great detail, but when you see any numbers related to policy it's just fragments to 'prove' some stupid oppinion? Why never seriously analyse the numbers rather using it selectively to blame Bush/Obama/Clinton/etc. and pretend you're actually looking at the numbers.

Re:Changing for the worse

[craigminah]

It still amazes me that people believe politicians are actually going to do what they promise while campaigning. The only way to objectively look at a candidate and what they might do if elected is to see what they did in their most previous office.

Smart

[th3rmite]

This is absolutely awesome. They are using science to figure out the most effective lies.

Re:Stats:

[fustakrakich]

Hillary has done little to warrant being President.

Maybe you're eying a different metric. Looking at the numbers, she appears more than qualified.

Re: Stats

[the eric conspiracy]

Um no.

The worst shill is MSNBC, by a lot. However Fox, CNN, etc really are about equal in their bias levels.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffbercovici/2013/03/18/pew-study-finds-msnbc-the-most-opinionated-cable-news-channel-by-far/

But that's not the whole picture. The fact is they all suck, it's a matter of degree only. The quality of coverage is terrible, and has been driven that way by Fox' tabloid approach.

Re:Changing for the worse

[I'm New Around Here]

Well, according to Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks, the only hope is to elect ultra conservative Republicans like Rand Paul.

http://www.campusreform.org/blog/?ID=4989

We shouldn't have elections

[NotQuiteReal]

We should have a draft. We would get a far better representation.

Re: Stats:

[Anonymous Coward]

or, you could just admit you're a Party Apologist who refuses to acknowledge that the left in this country is just as corrupt and incompetent as the neocon right. Get your mind out of that dichotomous rut it's in. There are other options out there.

Re: Stats

[Rockoon]

Forbes? Consider your source.

Ah, the source is Pew Research, not Forbes.

Now, we can debate the merits of Pew if you want, but I highly doubt that, because that would mean actually having an informed opinion about something, which clearly isnt important to the person that said 'consider your source' but got it fucking wrong.