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I remember reading Politco's "Hillary Clinton’s ‘Invisible Guiding Hand’" [1] back in mid 2016. I thought, "wow, the Democratic party is way ahead of the game i
by defertoreptar 7y ago
I remember reading Politco's "Hillary Clinton’s ‘Invisible Guiding Hand’" [1] back in mid 2016. I thought, "wow, the Democratic party is way ahead of the game in data analytics", seeing as how successfully they've applied it in Obama's campaign. Here are some choice excerpts:
> Kriegel’s anodyne title is Clinton’s director of analytics, but it’s a job that makes him, and his team of more than 60 mathematicians and analysts, something of the central nervous system for the campaign: charged with sensing, even predicting, the first tinglings of electoral trouble and then sending instructions to everyone on how to respond.
> When Clinton operatives talk about their “data-based” campaign, it’s invariably Kriegel’s data, and perhaps more importantly his models interpreting that data, they are talking about. It was an algorithm from Kriegel’s shop — unreported until now — that determined, after the opening states, where almost every dollar of Clinton’s more than $60 million in television ads was spent during the primary.
> Now, with Donald Trump investing virtually nothing in data analytics during the primary and little since, Kriegel’s work isn’t just powering Clinton’s campaign, it is providing her a crucial tactical advantage in the campaign’s final stretch. It’s one of the reasons her team is confident that, even if the race tightens as November approaches, they hold a distinctive edge. As millions of phone calls are made, doors knocked and ads aired in the next nine weeks, it is far likelier the Democratic voter contacts will reach the best and most receptive audiences than the Republican ones.
When this Cambridge Analytica stuff started coming out, I thought, "huh? what's the big fuss?" It seemed like people were upset with the Republican party for doing the same kind of targeted campaigning that the Democratic party had spent more money on, had more mathematicians on the payroll, and had more and higher quality data from the Obama presidency.
[1] https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/09/hillary-clinton-data-campaign-elan-kriegel-214215 https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/09/hillary-clin...
- yters 7y agoYes, I had the same question. I remember big hype stories gushing about the brilliance of Obama's social media analytics that drove the youth vote his way. But, when Republicans do the same thing, it's a huge scandal.
- sct202 7y agoObama and Romney both had GOTV platforms that used data to target GOTV efforts (and had matching sea animal code names), so it's not a Republicans v Dem thing. The CA scandal coincides with a lot of doubt about trusting large tech companies, which is why it's a big deal now.
- yters 7y agoWell, if it were a Rep v Dem thing, they obviously couldn't smack down Romney for doing something Obama was doing at the same time. So, tin foil hat speaking, hype Obama's version and ignore Romney's and then when only a Rep is doing the mining smack them down hard.
- kansface 7y ago> The CA scandal coincides with a lot of doubt about trusting large tech companies, which is why it's a big deal now. The very same institutions pushing the CA scandal are the ones who lauded the Obama campaign for its savvy use of technology. It is easier to blame large tech companies for the election than to accept any blame.
- makomk 7y agoAs far as I know, Romney's GOTV platform didn't scrape posts by people's Facebook friends without those friends' knowledge or consent in order to target their GOTV efforts, which is the part of Obama's 2012 campaign that is comparable to what Cambridge Analytica got in hot water for. Publications like the New York Times ran gushing articles about how brilliant Obama's team was for coming up with this and how marketers needed to learn from them. I think you're probably reversing cause and effect. The distrust of large tech companies is the result of people being upset about Republicans being the ones who're using them to win elections now, not the cause. (Of course, the Cambridge Analytica data in question wasn't even used by Trump's campaign, whereas the Obama campaign did use questionably scraped Facebook data, but little details like that don't matter...)