Books will be written about the recent election. I am looking forward to reading why Romney’s team and savvy operators like Dick Morris and Karl Rove appeared so surprised by the results. In contrast, Candy Crowley at CNN reports that two weeks ago (that is pre-Sandy) the Democrats appeared very confident based on their data crunching.
Some snippets are already becoming apparent.
Time describes the Obama campaign data crunchers
“(Jim Messina, the campaign manager) hired an analytics department five times as large as that of the 2008 operation, with an official "chief scientist" for the Chicago headquarters named Rayid Ghani, who in a previous life crunched huge data sets to, among other things, maximize the efficiency of supermarket sales promotions.
Exactly what that team of dozens of data crunchers was doing, however, was a closely held secret.
"They are our nuclear codes," campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt would say when asked about the efforts. Around the office, data-mining experiments were given mysterious code names such as Narwhal and Dreamcatcher. The team even worked at a remove from the rest of the campaign staff, setting up shop in a windowless room at the north end of the vast headquarters office.””
In contrast, Dick Morris explains some faulty assumptions he made, and also likely what the Romney campaign had in its models
“The key reason for my bum prediction is that I mistakenly believed that the 2008 surge in black, Latino, and young voter turnout would recede in 2012 to “normal” levels. Didn’t happen.”
Cannot wait to read the book about the data drama.
Good post - I'd say a combo of low-tech social and very big data.
Romney's camp over-relied on TV and "hoped" it would have results, whereas Obama's were literally trawling church halls, union meetings, local community gatherings etc making sure the same people came out again to vote - it worked even better than last time, as they had the data from last time and 4 years of added research to help them get really focused. It was the continuity from last time which was the decisive factor.
Also believe this election showed where broad media advertising starts to lose effectiveness after a certain level of saturation. You need a certain amount of ads to reinforce the messages (both +ve and -ve), but after a while the electorate mentally switches off from them. I believe many of the TV networks (and old school advertising consultants) were giving Romney's camp poor information per the efficacy of TV campaigns. Selling votes isn't the same as insurance policies...
Romney actually ran Obama really close in Ohio (which should have been an Obama slam-dunk) because his camp really got on the ground there and pulled out all the stops.
Posted by: Phil Fersht | November 08, 2012 at 06:23 AM