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Obama, Romney Data Scientists Strike Out On Their Own

Posted by timothy on from the hive-of-scum-and-villainy dept.

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.""

4 of 120 comments (clear)

  1. Who would hire the Romney failures? by vilanye · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Who would hire the Romney failures? by s.petry · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

      --

      -The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.

  2. Why only if votes are on the line? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  3. Smart by th3rmite · · Score: 5, Insightful

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