Tag: data

Trump’s answer on data is actually the right answer

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

Donald Trump says his Presidential campaign will be about personality, not data:

In his AP interview, Trump discounted the value of data: The “candidate is by far the most important thing,” he said. He said he plans a “limited” use of data in his general election campaign and suggested Obama’s victories — universally viewed by political professionals as groundbreaking in the way data steered the campaign to voters — are misunderstood.

“Obama got the votes much more so than his data processing machine, and I think the same is true with me,” Trump said, explaining that he will continue to focus on his signature rallies, free television exposure and his personal social media accounts to win voters over.

That’s exactly the wrong answer on an 8:00 a.m. conference call, but it’s exactly the right answer for an interview – which is something many political professionals miss. In the quest to sound smart to industry press, operatives can fall into the trap of talking too much about process. But voters don’t care.

Yes, the data-driven campaigns President Barack Obama ran in 2008 and 2012 were groundbreaking. But people voted for Obama’s message. The data elements helped them vote, but they made the choice, ultimately, based on the message.

In this cycle, polarizing figures with limited crossover appeal lead both major parties. Both presumptive nominees face divisions within their parties. Voter turnout could suffer, which could make the ground game vital. If the race is close, it will likely be the campaign with the better turnout operation that comes out ahead.

But a candidate has three jobs: 1) Ask for votes; 2) Ask for money; 3) Don’t mess up. Chatting about campaign tactics is not on the list.

Maybe Trump has a basement full of nerds chained to computers analyzing data sets to develop the winning turnout plan. Even if he does, it wouldn’t help him to brag about it. Even if the Trump campaign proved to be the most sophisticated data operation in the history of ones and zeros, it would only serve to amplify his message.

Campaign tactics may drive votes, but personality wins voters.

Hillary Clinton’s razor-thin 38-point polling advantage

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

That’s Hillary Clinton’s average lead among non-white voters over various Republican candidates in the head-to-head questions from the CNN/ORC poll released on Tuesday. But the 64-68% support range she hovers might not be enough. As discussed in this week’s post on Communities Digital News, Clinton is lagging behind President Obama’s 82%-16% edge among non-white voters during his re-election.

All the headlines yapped about the Republican field closing the gap on Clinton. That’s important psychologically, but we all knew the race would tighten. This a much bigger potential problem for Clinton.

The difference between where Clinton sits and Obama’s 2012 performance translates into Mitt Romney carrying Florida, Virginia, and Ohio – with a real shot at picking up either Nevada or Colorado for an Electoral College majority. Again, this doesn’t anticipate any minority votes moving from the blue column to the red column; those are only lost votes.

That’s a real big problem for Clinton, who will surely try to exploit police/community relations as a wedge issue.

Maybe Clinton still gets by with a little help from her friends. The NAACP will surely try to literally scare up black voters with images of Freddie Gray and Michael Brown. The arbotion industry will try to do the same with women. Plus, there’s always fraud.

But the point is that she has to do something, because she isn’t inheriting the Obama coalition – at least, not in the numbers she needs.

It’s not just winning, but HOW you win

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

Some would tell you that the larger, more diverse electorate that shows up in a Presidential year means Republicans are marching toward disappointment in 2016. Not so. In my new piece at Communities Digital News, I discuss how data-driven campaigning delivered most of the really close races of 2014 to the GOP – and how that sets them up for future success.

Sure, 2014 was a wave election – but that shouldn’t detract from smart Republican campaigns that put themselves in position to take advantage. There’s a difference between riding a wave and surfing.

The political “digital divide” is closing – but not because of this

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

Politico pointed out that Republicans lead Democrats in viral videos this election cycle:

By generating hundreds of thousands of clicks, the Republicans’ digital success represents a remarkable tech turnaround compared with 2012, when President Barack Obama’s campaign easily outpaced Mitt Romney and the rest of the GOP field in the production of the most popular Web content.

That’s right and wrong at the same time, which is really tough to do.

A higher click total is not a sign of better use of technology, but a sign of better use of message. The article goes on to talk about why the Republican message has been so video-friendly, which underscores the point.

The technology to make an online video is pretty simple, any yahoo with a Mac can make something that looks pretty decent. Clicks come from content – what the video says is more important than Politico lets on.

If you want to know why Republicans have closed in on the Democrats’ tech advantage, look at the actual technology and how it’s being used. For example, i360, a data firm that caters to conservative movement organizations, and DataTrust, the data wing of the GOP, are sharing their voter data. If one of those companies found out that you’re an independent and the other one knows you’re left handed, campaigns would have access to both tags and could use both to shape how they talk to you. That’s a legit tech upgrade over the sloppy, fractured Republican data infrastructure of the past.

How important is Memorial Day REALLY?

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

It seems as if each year, some version of this Rasmussen poll is released. According to a survey, 39% of Americans see Memorial Day as “one of the most important” holidays we celebrate.

You have to wonder how honest those answers are. Wouldn’t most decent people, when asked, say it’s important to set aside a day each year to remember those who served and died? I bet the folks at Progress Now New Mexico would, even if they didn’t bother to release a simple statement to that effect. Ditto for the countless Americans who treated the just-passed long weekend as a summer kickoff, an opportunity for extra yard work, or a chance for a cookout with the good meats – not just hot dogs.

All of these are valid ways to spend the weekend, and your Memorial Day remembrance was a couple minutes of silent reflection rather than a day of fervent prayer for souls lost in battle, that’s okay. In fact, it’s kind of cool that we hold the concept of Memorial Day in higher esteem than our practice of it. (In the interest of staying off the high horse, I’ll gladly cop to being in the category of people who would say that Memorial Day is one of our most important national holidays, while having spent it driving through central Virginia wondering when the next Sheetz would appear on the side of Route 29.)

The point is that what people say about their behavior may represent their values, but their actions may not match.

For example, it’s a tricky thing for political pollsters to model who is going to be in the electorate in a given year – and while self-identification may be a factor, previous voting history is a bigger factor. You may tell a pollster you aren’t feeling it this year, but chances are that if you always find a way to the polls, you will again this time around.

Similarly, you may tell a pollster you intend to vote, but if you traditionally go the George Carlin route and just stay home, there’s a chance you’ll do it again. But if you say you plan to vote, but have a history of not voting, it may signify an intent to vote, or at least an understanding of the value of voting. Those people would probably be more open to get-out-the-vote messaging and campaign communication – the way a Memorial Day grillmaster might stop somewhere between medium and medium-well and think about how good we have it, and feel that brief pang of guilt for those that faced a much more intense heat than his propane-fueled crucible of shish-kabob.

Even when reality falls short of aspiration, the aspiration can be useful just the same.

Project Ivy and digital coat tails

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

Over at Communities Digital News, I have a new piece up about Project Ivy – the Democrats’ plan to deploy the digital tools that helped President Obama in 2012 and Terry McAuliffe in 2013 into down ballot races in 2014:

The data tools used this year may not help Democrats keep their hold on the Senate, or win more Governorships, or even gain ground in state legislative chambers. But all the data collected with those tools in 2014 will be mighty useful when a few hundred votes in Cuyahoga County could decide the White House in two short years.

Republicans may not need to match Democrats data point for data point to have a pretty good election cycle in 2014. But deploying their own tools with the future in mind will help build their abilities for coming cycles. 

You want more?  Here it is.

Democrats know they are facing an against-the-spread election this November. They’ll lose seats, but the question is how many. Dropping as many as five Senate seats to the GOP will look like a win if they maintain a voting majority for the next term.  And like a baseball team playing out the string with a 40-man roster in September, minor league talent in down-ballot races can help set the table for future victories.  Project Ivy isn’t really for 2014, it’s for 2016.

But if I bled Democrat blue there would be one major factor that rubs me the wrong way about Project Ivy: the name.

First off, ivy grows up, while the project takes high-level tactics and tries to push them down.  Maybe that strategy makes sense for Democrats, who put so much faith in federal government programs to cure the ills of small communities, but the metaphor is a bit off.

Second, remember Project ORCA? It was the widely panned GOTV app that Team Romney deployed in 2012, and was so named because the Obama team’s data processing system was nicknamed “Narwhal,” and orcas kill narwhals.  As it turned out, the narwhal was an octopus with tentacles everywhere, and orcas don’t do crap against octopi.  This metaphor is getting even more tortured, so let’s move to the point: A clever name often foreshadows failure.  The only political tactical operations with cool names that work are the ones you hear about after the election.

The best news for the GOP about Project Ivy might be the fact that the first news stories about it are in March 2014, and not the week after Election Day.

Three out of four ain’t bad…

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

Turnout operations are critical in tight campaigns – and especially so in mid-term elections, campaigns can’t rely on national awareness to gin up attention to Election Day.  As I noted in my most recent Washington Times Communities post, mid-term turnout modeling means than Republicans can win big with just 75% of their 2012 voters coming back.

Obviously, to create that much excitement, Republican candidates are going to have to have good messages and be disciplined about sticking to them.  But with continued problems with Obamacare, the messaging environment will likely be in the GOP’s favor.  And people who voted Republican in 2012 – which was an off-year – are probably much happier with their vote than their Democrat friends and neighbors.

 

Wrapping up Cuccinelli’s loss

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

Last week I started a column at the Washington Times Communities page called “By the Numbers” and started with a look at Ken Cuccinelli’s Virginia loss.  

With just 3.1%more of Mitt Romney’s 2012 voters, Cuccinelli could have celebrated a Dewey-defeats-Truman moment.  Instead, 780,000 Virginians who supported Romney’s losing effort stayed home, and Terry McAuliffe sneaked past by around 55,000 votes.  POLITICO profiled McAuliffe’s advanced data-driven operation, which read like the post-game analysis of Barack Obama’s win last year.  Meanwhile, Stu Rothenberg underscored Cuccinelli’s failure to bring back Romeny voters.

There were plenty of challenges thrown at Cuccinelli: a spending gap, infighting, an erroneously modeled Washington Post poll that depressed GOP turnout, and center-right outside groups staying on the sideline.  Blaming these things for the loss is like a football team blaming a one-point defeat on a bad call in the first quarter rather than a botched field goal on the last play of the game.  Those factors put Cuccinelli in a bad position, but he was still in a position to win.

Campaign plans are being hatched for 2014 right now, and would-be victors should look at Cuccinelli’s loss careful.  Luck – good or bad – is the residue of design.

 

Who’d respond to a conservative grassroots campaign? Norwegians would.

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

(Yes, that’s a pretty tortured Beatles reference, but Mama E would be upset if it wasn’t there.)

Norway has a center-right government now, led by the second female prime minister in their history, Edna Solberg.  Congratulations to Høyre, the Norwegian conservative party, that forms the backbone of the governing coalition.

Their success did not happen overnight.  Back in the summer 2009, the conservatives were decimated and trending downward.  Even the activists were wary or being active – knocking on doors for politics was viewed by some as an invasion of personal space, and no one wanted to be impolite.  (Imagine the political process being stymied because people are too polite.  Now there’s a foreign concept.)

There were, however, some very positive leaders within the party who appreciated the opportunities of technology and how it could help with a door-to-door and voter-to-voter ground game,  (They even brought in some bumbling American to help them make the case to their activists.)

This week, they realized the fruits of their efforts:

Conservatives in America can learn how to win elections from Erna Solberg and conservatives in Norway… For example, in the city of Hamar (population 29,000), the Conservative Party’s voter technology identified over 5,000 homes where the bulk of their base vote would come from.  

In the week leading up to the election, every identified home was personally contacted by a volunteer.  In addition, all identified conservative voters throughout the entire country received text messages on election day.