… The scope of the analytic research enabled it to pick up movements too small for traditional polls to perceive. …
For the most part, however, the analytic tables demonstrated how stable the electorate was, and how predictable individual voters could be. Polls from the media and academic institutions may have fluctuated by the hour, but drawing on hundreds of data points to judge whether someone was a likely voter proved more reliable than using a seven-question battery like Gallup’s to do the same.
“When you see this Pogo stick happening with the public data—the electorate is just not that volatile,” says Mitch Stewart, director of the Democratic campaign group Organizing for America. The analytic data offered a source of calm. [cont.]
Sasha Issenberg, MIT Technology Review