Tech and the Future

An overview of the Obama organization:

To really understand what happened behind the scenes at the Obama campaign, you need to know a little bit about its organizational structure. Tech was Harper Reed's domain. "Digital" was Joe Rospars' kingdom; his team was composed of the people who sent you all those emails, designed some of the consumer-facing pieces of BarackObama.com, and ran the campaigns' most-excellent accounts on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, video, and the like. Analytics was run by Dan Wagner, and those guys were responsible for coming up with ways of finding and targeting voters they could persuade or turn out. Jeremy Bird ran Field, the on-the-ground operations of organizing voters at the community level that many consider Obama's secret sauce . The tech for the campaign was supposed to help the Field, Analytics, and Digital teams do their jobs better. Tech, in a campaign or at least this campaign or perhaps any successful campaign, has to play a supporting role. The goal was not to build a product. The goal was to reelect the President. As Reed put it, if the campaign were Moneyball, he wouldn't be Billy Beane, he'd be "Google Boy."

Some pointers from an alum:

Learn statistics and coding

Test assumptions. In Inside the Cave, Patrick Ruffini quotes a senior member of the Obama digital team saying "“We basically found our guts were worthless."

Think probabilistically, change the culture. Again, from Patrick Ruffini:

Often, people get excited about being “data-driven” but only go part way. If you’re asking for a “data driven” ad buy to women 35 to 49, how do you know women 35 to 49 are the right target? Did you test it? The reason you collect data is to optimize based on probability. Instead, try placing an ad designed to reach individuals with a score of 70 or more on your persuadability model. The targeting itself also needs to be done probabilistically.

The culture shift needed in politics is not one of technology. Everyone loves technology and wants more of it, because it lets you to do whatever you’re doing more efficiently. The problem is that what you’re doing could be the wrong thing. Applied the wrong way, technology helps you run very fast in the wrong direction.

Issenberg on 2014 and the Bannock Street Project

But the numbers are getting worse and GDP does not help

Technology and Technique

A positive ad:




Turnout:  summing up research findings:  social pressure

The 2006 Perry experiements and the timing of ads and the practical consequences

The Perry 2006 and 2010 campaigns





VAN




The Living Room Candidate
Other Resources

Turnout, Targeting, Technology, and 2014

There was not a lot of ticket-splitting in 2012.

At The New York Times,UCLA's Professor Lynn Vavreck explains:

[O]nly a small percentage of voters actually switched sides between 2008 and 2010. Moreover, there were almost as many John McCain voters who voted for a Democratic House candidate in 2010 as there were Obama voters who shifted the other way. That may be a surprise to some, but it comes from one of the largest longitudinal study of voters, YouGov’s Cooperative Campaign Analysis Project (C.C.A.P.), for which YouGov interviewed 45,000 people at multiple points during 2011 and 2012.

The results clearly show that voters in 2010 did not abandon the Democrats for the other side, but they did forsake the party in another important way: Many stayed home.

Field and Targeting from WellstoneActionMBP



Obama Legacy Report

Brits Adopt US Politicos, Campaign Strategies

From POLITICO: In the UK, both the Labour Party and the Tories have poached two leading US political consultants to adapt their messaging strategies and help them win. This is notable for several reasons. For one, they chose David Axelrod and Jim Messina...two Democrats who had helped Obama win his 2 presidential elections. It is telling that both parties chose Democrats to help rebrand their party and their major candidates. These choices evidence that political consultants, not candidates, are driving elections more than ever--and not just in the US. Finally, British politics are different from politics in the US, of course, so we will have to see how the consultants' strategies translate.

To Which Party Does This Candidate Belong?

A photo of a real sign for a real candidate:

Turnout and Targeting

Different definitions of turnout:

• Immigration and noncitizen status
• The prison population and felon disenfranchisement

Turnout:  survey v. vote count

Demographics of the vote

Age:

Educational Attainment:

Total...........................61.8%

Less than 9th grade.....37.1

9th-12th grade............38.3

High school grad.........52.6

Some college..............64.2

College grad...............75.0

Postgrad.....................81.3

Race and Ethnicity

Targeting and Claritas clusters

SNL's "New Republican Party"

Someone just sent me this video, and I thought you'd all get a kick out of it!

Last Assignment

Pick one:

• In the prologue to The Victory Lab, Issenberg writes:  "Electoral politics has quietly entered the twenty-first century by undoing the greatest excesses of the late twentieth."  What does he mean? How might a critic disagree?  Which side would you take?  In your answer, draw upon Issenberg and other course readings, as well as any additional sources that might be appropriate.
• The 2016 presidential campaign may pit a Clinton against a Bush.  Based on what you have learned in the course, tell how will the party politics of 2016 differ from that of the last Clinton-Bush race, in 1992. In your answer, consider PIE, PO, PIG, POG, and campaign technology.  Which side gains the most from the changes?

The specifications:

• Essays should be typed (12-point), double-spaced, and no more than four pages long. I will not read past the fourth page. 
• Cite your sources. Please use endnotes in the format of Chicago Manual of Style. Endnotes do not count against the page limit. Please do not use footnotes, which take up too much page space. 
• Watch your spelling, grammar, diction, and punctuation. Errors will count against you. Return essays to the Sakai dropbox for this class by 11:59 PM, Monday, May 5. Papers will drop one gradepoint for one day’s lateness, a full letter grade after that.

Consulting and GOTV

The Landrieu ad

  Back to FECA:  coordinated and independent expenditures
Example:  NRCC independent expenditures

Microsites

• Coordinate with POGs (background)
• "Lookalike sites" as a way of catching websurfers

Green and Gerber:  Get Out the Vote!

Parties and Campaigns: Services and Functions

1. "How to Get Ahead in Suck-Up City," by Charles Murray
2. Job and Internship Leads

An organization chart
RNC

Paid media and party branding:

Dilemmas, Parties, and Governance

The Tea Party and Institutional Memory

Boehner's Dilemma


A revolt on the floor

The shutdown's immediate impact

...Then came the Obamacare rollout

Boehner and conservative POGs:

 


The Big Picture

• Partisan Divisions in Congress
• A quick look back at 3/31 post
• Senate Filibusters
• Matt Grossmann on the arc of history

Jeb Bush-Worst Candidate?

An interesting article related to our conversation about Jeb Bush as a 2016 candidate in class today. The author discusses the hurdles that Jeb faces on two fronts: his inexperience with presidential campaigning (he hasn't been in the campaigning "game" for 12 years), and his centrist policies amidst a Republican party that is characterized by its extremes. Even though this article found itself on the front page of Buzzfeed (bookended by "14 Insanely Rad Yearbook Photos" and "17 Baby Elephants Learning How to Use Their Trunks"), it does highlight the influence of party politics on potential presidential candidates.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/bensmith/why-jeb-bush-is-a-terrible-candidate

Parties and Policy

 The reaction to the "Read My Lips" reversal

 





The Tea Party and Institutional Memory

Bill Sponsorship and Election Strategy

Politico reports:

Top Democrats are putting something special together for their Senate colleagues in tough races this year: a vulnerable-incumbent protection program.

At-risk senators will get to beef up their back-home cred by taking the lead on bills and amendments tailored to their campaigns. And they won’t be stuck in the back row at news conferences but will be in front of TV cameras and taking center stage during Senate debates.

It’s all part of an effort to blunt a furious Republican midterm campaign centered on attacking President Barack Obama and Democrats in the Senate who supported his signature health care law.

Leaders are coalescing around giving Arkansas Sen. Mark Pryor the lead on a bill to protect the Medicare eligibility age, which has become a key issue in his race. Kay Hagan will tout her fight for long-term unemployment benefits rejected by the GOP-dominated North Carolina Legislature and her likely opponent, statehouse Speaker Thom Tillis. And leaders hope to give Jeanne Shaheen a triumph on energy efficiency, a bipartisan breakthrough that would play well in purple New Hampshire.

Similar things happen in state legislatures Journalist Todd Spivak recalls how Illinois State Senate President Emil Jones promoted the career of a young backbencher over a decade ago.

Jones had served in the Illinois Legislature for three decades. He represented a district on the Chicago South Side not far from Obama's. He became Obama's ­kingmaker.

Several months before Obama announced his U.S. Senate bid, Jones called his old friend Cliff Kelley, a former Chicago alderman who now hosts the city's most popular black call-in radio ­program.

I called Kelley last week and he recollected the private conversation as follows:

"He said, 'Cliff, I'm gonna make me a U.S. Senator.'"

"Oh, you are? Who might that be?"

"Barack Obama."

Jones appointed Obama sponsor of virtually every high-profile piece of legislation, angering many rank-and-file state legislators who had more seniority than Obama and had spent years championing the bills

McCutcheon, Bundling, Parties in Government

Review:  FECA limits

The McCutcheon case:



Expert reactions

Political winners and losers

Bundling:

• Reporting rules (subject to easy evasion)
• Obama bundlers

Joint Fundraising Committees

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Gingrich, Wilson, and Responsible Parties

Wilson, Congressional Government:

It is probably also this lack of leadership which gives to our national parties their curious, conglomerate character. It would seem to be scarcely an exaggeration to say that they are homogeneous only in name. Neither of the two principal parties is of one mind with itself. Each tolerates all sorts of difference of creed and variety of aim within its own ranks. Each pretends to the same purposes and permits among its partisans the same contradictions to those purposes. They are grouped around no legislative leaders whose capacity has been tested and to whose opinions they loyally adhere. They are like armies without officers, engaged upon a campaign which has no great cause at its back. Their names and traditions, not their hopes and policy, keep them together.

• "Toward a More Responsible Two-Party System"

Gingrich in the minority

• Media
• Self-image

Gingrich in the majority

• Shutdowns
• Presidential Power
• Unpopularity
• Factionalism and dissatisfaction

Supreme Court Strikes Down Individual Campaign Contribution Limits

In a 5-4 vote the Supreme Court struck down individual campaign contribution limits on the grounds that such limits violate the 1st Amendment.

Chief Justice Roberts wrote in his opinion, "This Court has identified only one legitimate governmental interest for restricting campaign finances: preventing corruption or the appearance of corruption. We have consistently rejected attempts to suppress campaign speech based on other legislative objectives. No matter how desirable it may seem, it is not an acceptable governmental objective to ‘level the playing field,’ or to ‘level electoral opportunities,’ or to ‘equalize the financial resources of candidates…’ The First Amendment prohibits such legislative attempts to ‘fine-tune’ the electoral process, no matter how well intentioned."

See more at Politico or Scotus Blog.

Vincent Gray Upset in Mayoral Primary

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/dc-politics/muriel-bowser-now-the-democratic-nominee-for-mayor-is-a-woman-apart-in-dc-politics/2014/04/01/dfe1bf26-b5b8-11e3-b899-20667de76985_story.html?hpid=z2

Impact of Gaffes on Voters

FiveThirtyEight has an interesting article about the impact of gaffes on voting and campaign finance. Nate Silver says that gaffes impact the media audience but not necessarily voters. According to him, Romney's "47 percent" comment only had a 1 percentage point swing in favor of Obama. But like Prof. Pitney said in class, even 1 percentage point is significant in such elections. 

Jimmy Carter & Religion

We talked Monday about Jimmy Carter and religion, and I think this Colbert Report episode (here and here) provides interesting (and funny) insight into the role social gospel is still playing in his life. His new book, "A Call to Action: Women, Religion, Violence, and Power" is about how much of women's suffering at the hands of religion comes from false interpretation of religious texts (it's also his 28th book!). He also says he'll convert to Catholicism if the current Pope remains and a female priest asks him to join. Carter also wrote the Pope a letter about his book and "he said that he agreed with many of the things I told him about, which he already knew I'm sure, and he said that in his opinion in the future years, women needed to play a much greater role in the Catholic Church than they were playing now or have played in the past."

I'm struggling to find a shorter clip of the portions I'm talking about, but the entire episode is worth a watch in your spare time. Here is an article about it as well.