The primary season is here, the first Republican debates are in the books, and the presidential candidates are trying to persuade voters to support them. Persuasion happens a lot in primaries, but enjoy it while it lasts: Once campaigning for the general election begins, persuasion will mostly disappear, and mobilization […] Read more »
How the GOP Can Capture the ‘Selfie Vote’
In this week’s PRESS Pass, GOP pollster Kristen Soltis Anderson discusses her new book, “Selfie Vote: Where Millennials Are Leading America – and How Republicans Can Keep Up.” Meet the Press Read more »
Inside the GOP’s Effort to Close the Campaign-Science Gap With Democrats
This spring, the Cato Institute identified 600 Americans who read more than 20 books per year and made arrangements to send them each one more. … The Cato researcher behind the project explained to other members of a below-the-radar Republican group known as the Center for Strategic Initiatives, or CSI, […] Read more »
Meet the 21st-Century Political Alchemist Who’s Been Data-Mining for Hillary for the Past Two Years
When Mitch Stewart first became a field organizer, in 2002, it looked like the most anachronistic job a young man could seek out in a 21st-century campaign: managing and training volunteers for the work of phone banks and door knocks. At that point, the glamour job in politics was making […] Read more »
Why data-driven campaigning matters in the 2014 US elections and beyond
… Profiling voters isn’t novel, nor is the use of demographic data. What’s new is the explosion of data collection around other activities that can inform those profiles and models of behaviors: what you buy, what you watch, what you “like,” what you share, or which people or brands you […] Read more »
The fault is not in their models
I was a modeler before it was cool. Our firm brought modeling to Democratic poll data in the early 1980s, created the first micro-targeting models in the middle and late 1980s, developed the first state-level Senate forecasting model for use in resource allocation in the 1990s and built state-level presidential […] Read more »