… The Internet industry, having nudged consumers to share heaps of information about themselves, has built a trove of personal data for government agencies to mine — erecting, perhaps unintentionally, what Alessandro Acquisti, a Carnegie Mellon University behavioral economist, calls “the de facto infrastructure of surveillance.” Nearly five months after […] Read more »
The Reselling of the President
Richard Wolffe’s account of the 2012 election [“The Message: The Reselling of President Obama”] is a fine behind-the-scenes campaign-trail book that makes me wonder about the future of behind-the-scenes campaign-trail books. … Yet “The Message” is actually most interesting when Wolffe descends from the executive suite to the “boiler room,” […] Read more »
6 Things Losing Candidates Say
It’s August of an odd-numbered year, but the 2014 cycle is heating up. That means dozens of candidates are visiting us at The Rothenberg Political Report and Roll Call in anticipation of the midterm elections. Some of them will win, but most will lose. So we’ve started taking notes on […] Read more »
Data You Can Believe In: The Obama Campaign’s Digital Masterminds Cash In
… A.M.G. [Analytics Media Group] was founded in late December by a splinter group of longtime Obama advisers. … The campaign recruited the best young minds in the booming fields of analytics and behavioral science and placed them in a room they called “the cave” for up to 16 hours […] Read more »
Six Facts Lost in the IRS Scandal
In the furious fallout from the revelation that the IRS flagged applications from conservative nonprofits for extra review because of their political activity, some points about the big picture — and big donors — have fallen through the cracks. Consider this our Top 6 list of need-to-know facts on social […] Read more »
The Gamble: High Rollers
“High Rollers” is a free eBook preview chapter from John Sides and Lynn Vavreck’s groundbreaking Fall 2013 book, The Gamble: Choice and Chance in the 2012 Presidential Election. Picking up where the third chapter, “All In,” left off, “High Rollers” continues the dramatic story of the 2012 campaign into the […] Read more »