Oh, there are always geeks in the sidelines! :) The party machines have researchers, and there are think tanks which actually try to do some real investigations

Oh, there are always geeks in the sidelines! :) The party machines have researchers, and there are think tanks which actually try to do some real investigations etc - as long as they sit with the appropriate set of ideological guesses of the politician in question then they get adopted. It's not totally random (like genetics) as with such small populations (of politicians) that really wouldn't work ;)