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2013-01-21 Science
How President Obama's campaign used big data to rally individual voters
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Posted by trailing wife 2013-01-21 00:00|| || Front Page|| [336129 views ]  Top

#1 Photo ID with verification in order to vote. Wonder how that would affect things?
Posted by OldSpook 2013-01-21 01:08||   2013-01-21 01:08|| Front Page Top

#2 If the GOP had been using technology to such an extent, and had won, want to bet how much we'd be hearing about this? Calls to 'ban individual-tageted campaigning', constant references to 'the Sinister Reach of the Republican Campaign Machine', the Republican Campaign Computer photoshopped as Time's Man of the Year...
Posted by Bulldog 2013-01-21 02:29||   2013-01-21 02:29|| Front Page Top

#3 Not so sure about the "ward election" and big data theory. When you have 48 million people on Food Stamps, who are they going to vote for, the guy that say's he's..."going to put America back to work" ?

A more likely scenario is that the Dems have reached the gov't dependency tipping point. If the Champ is successful in granting "amnesty to illegals", we really are finished.
Posted by Besoeker 2013-01-21 02:36||   2013-01-21 02:36|| Front Page Top

#4 What Besoeker said X100.

Despite what all the Republican pundits were saying about "broken glass" conservative voters before November, the real broken glass voters were ever person (outside of active duty military) who gets a check from the government.

No person who gets a government check can ever be made to understand an argument for its diminishment or removal, even if the result of keeping their precious brings down the nation.

The times we are living through prove this.
Posted by no mo uro 2013-01-21 08:08||   2013-01-21 08:08|| Front Page Top

#5 That's exactly how a former roommate of mine voted; says he went for Obama because he'd keep the unemployment checks rolling in.
Posted by Raj 2013-01-21 10:58||   2013-01-21 10:58|| Front Page Top

#6 I've been seeing a lot of this stuff recently about how the Dems had a magic bullet and the Republicans were incompetent or absent at data analysis (especially the threads on slashdot where they not only said both of these, but also said that apparently democrat-leaning people working for the repub effort were above reproach and still to be regarded as competent...)

Anyway, to make a long story short, whenever this topic has come up before in places other than the MIT Technology Review, it came attached to a whole bunch of 'tells' of the sort I've come to associate with con artists.

I don't really expect anything different from present-day MIT, they're probably too deep in the academic-liberalism mindset to do anything else. Someone let me know if this is really worth reading instead of more of the same.

The other thing bugging me... if the Democrats really did have a "magic bullet" technical advantage _like_ this, would they talk about it or make up something fake-but-semi-plausible to divert from what they really did?

I think this whole "Big Data" thing is fake-but-plausible to distract from what they really did.

What that is, I dunno, maybe Beo is partly right.

My personal hunch: they worked to suppress the Republican vote in some not-very-obvious ways that will keep them from trying that strategy again if the details become public.

But it explains why they keep trying to get the Republicans in Congress to swallow poison pills.
Posted by Thing From Snowy Mountain 2013-01-21 12:15||   2013-01-21 12:15|| Front Page Top

#7 tl;dr: they're not telling us the whole truth, and some of what they're telling are lies. The whole truth is probably something else. I dunno, I have a lot of hunches. HTH, HAND.
Posted by Thing From Snowy Mountain 2013-01-21 12:29||   2013-01-21 12:29|| Front Page Top

#8 As a data analyst I question whether this administration used the unemployment, welfare, Medicare, SS disability... rosters as seed files for the data mining.
Posted by Airandee 2013-01-21 15:37||   2013-01-21 15:37|| Front Page Top

#9 The Battle of Athens, TN
Posted by Thavise Chererong6562 2013-01-21 15:53||   2013-01-21 15:53|| Front Page Top

#10 Is there an echo in here (#9)?
Posted by Barbara 2013-01-21 16:04||   2013-01-21 16:04|| Front Page Top

#11 Snowy, it's basically a true account. The O campaign leveraged big data analytics, including Facebook and Twitter, to identify people who would vote for him, and then people connected to those people who could be socially persuaded / pressured to vote for him, etc.

In addition, they bussed everyone they could get onto a bus to vote, early, with free food etc. as the reward. So a much larger proportion than usual of e.g. students and welfare recipients cast ballots.

Meanwhile, on the libertarian/right side we had purists who decided not to sully themselves by casting a vote for Romney, who has cooties.

It wasn't just the big data analytics, it was translating that to a get out the vote effort that produced the small majority for O. And that effort in turn was successful because it was based on a solid understanding of their demographic, including the horizontal, peer-affiliation of current 20 somethings, which made them very susceptible to the peer pressure ploy and to the 'coolness' factor of celebrity endorsements.
Posted by lotp 2013-01-21 16:17||   2013-01-21 16:17|| Front Page Top

#12 Meanwhile, on the libertarian/right side we had purists who decided not to sully themselves by casting a vote for Romney, who has cooties because he's actually competant.

Yah, I don't think that "just happened." I think they _worked_ for that. And that's part of what they're not talking about.
Posted by Thing From Snowy Mountain 2013-01-21 16:33||   2013-01-21 16:33|| Front Page Top

#13 "the real broken glass voters were ever person (outside of active duty military) who gets a check from the government. "
Sorry no mo uro, I'm getting less than 30% of what I paid for SSDI per month. Major back surgery from three shoot downs in Nam and no compensation is fraud on our gumt's part. A gum't check, in some cases, does not indicate the recipients fraud.
Posted by Angairong Spaiger6091  2013-01-21 16:48||   2013-01-21 16:48|| Front Page Top

#14 Thank you for your service Spaiger.
Posted by Besoeker 2013-01-21 17:14||   2013-01-21 17:14|| Front Page Top

#15 Obviously, sir, you are the exception that proves the rule. You deserve a government check. That doesn't negate the fact that legions of others do not.

Thank you for your service, #13.
Posted by no mo uro 2013-01-21 19:20||   2013-01-21 19:20|| Front Page Top

#16 More succintly ...

* DEFENCE.PK/FORUMS > OBAMA'S SECRET WEAPON IN [2012] RE-ELECTION: PAKISTANI SCIENTIST RAYID GHANI. Data/Info Tech Wizard.

ARTIC = Until 2010 Elex + MR. GHANI, US Dems previously were unable to effectively or accurately streamline Datas in favor of reliable or realistic, streamlined forecasts.

On a separate note - NICE LEGS!
Posted by JosephMendiola 2013-01-21 23:47||   2013-01-21 23:47|| Front Page Top

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