Behind Obama's re-election: the era of big political data is coming

Beijing Time November 8 news, according to foreign media reports, the United States Time magazine contributor Michael Scherer Schlo the Obama campaign in the current election of the new data analysis strategy to make an analysis. Schlo that the data analysis team behind the campaign team played a crucial role in the Obama re-election process, and even far beyond the imagination. With the dust set in the election, the big data age in politics may be coming.

The following are the main contents of the article:

"The Clooney Effect"

Later this spring, the data analysis team behind the Obama campaign noted that George Clooney, a famous American film star, had a Clooney appeal to 40-49-year-old women on the west coast of the United States. This part of the women may even be willing to pay a lot of money for dinner with Clooney and Obama.

In the run-up to the past two years, Obama's data analysis team has been collecting, storing and analyzing voter data. In this election, senior aides to the Obama campaign decided to draw on the results of the team's data analysis to make the next campaign plan. Their idea is to replicate the "Clooney effect" and raise campaign funding for Mr Obama, by finding a celebrity with the same appeal for the female population on the east coast.

A senior adviser to the Obama campaign said: "There are countless choices in front of us, but we finally chose Sarah Jessica Parker." "So there is a" competition "for dinner with Obama at Parker's West Sanlitun mansion in New York.

Create a digital campaign

What ordinary people do not know, however, is that the idea of the event stems from the Obama digital team's success with Parker's Fan research Institute. They found that Parker's fans liked competitions, small gatherings and celebrities. From the start of the presidential election, Jim Messner, the Obama campaign director, has pledged to build a completely different, data-driven campaign. Politics is the ultimate goal in this situation, but the political sense of smell is no longer the only way to win a presidential candidate.

"We will conduct a data analysis of each event in this campaign," said Messner, who accepted the Obama campaign's lead. ”

Subsequently, Messner hired a large number of analysts for the team, five times times the size of the 2008-year campaign, and Reide-Garnier (Rayid Ghani), who has extensive experience in data mining, as chief scientist at the Chicago Campaign Headquarters (figuratively Scientist). Garnier's previous job was to collect a lot of data, and after analyzing the data, he came up with a way to maximize the efficiency of the supermarket sales. However, the data analysis team's specific work has been kept strictly confidential.

Strict security

"They are our nuclear code," said Ben LaBolt, spokesman for the Obama campaign, when asked about Bolt. ”

It is reported that in the office scope, this team will give each data analysis project by the code name, for instance "unicorn" (narwhal), "The Dreamer" (Dreamcatcher) and so on. They usually work away from the campaign team and have a windowless studio in the northernmost part of the campaign headquarters.

These people will make daily briefings for presidents and other senior aides who are in the White House Roosevelt Hall (Roosevelt reactiveness). However, more details about the team were not disclosed, as the team hid the Obama campaign's Trump-Romney campaign: data.

On November 4 this year, several senior advisers to the Obama campaign agreed to talk to time about their work. Their terms are: first, their names are not open to the public, and second, the contents of the conversation should not be disclosed until the next president is determined.

In the conversation, they disclosed some little-known insider. For example, how to help Obama raise 1 billion of billions of dollars by analyzing a lot of data, how to change TV advertising strategies, how to produce a specific data analysis model for swing state voters and recommendations for the most effective canvassing methods, including mailing letters, calling or using social media.

Consolidating resources

In the 2008 campaign, the Obama team won a lot of praise for the use of high technology, but its success hides a huge weakness: too many databases.

At the time, the volunteers who called for canvassing through the Obama website differed from the list used by the Obama campaign office, and the canvassing and fundraising lists were no more than the FBI and CIA (CIA) would never have shared resources before 911.

"We know that the problem with the Democratic Party is that it has a majority of databases and no two databases are the same," says one Obama campaign official. So, in the 18 months before the presidential race, the campaign team created a huge system that integrates information from pollsters, donors, workers, consumers, social media, and key Democratic voters in swing state.

The consolidated database will not only tell us how to find voters and get their attention, but also allow our data Analysis team to do some testing to predict which types of people are likely to be persuaded by certain things. For example, the campaign office's list of canvassing calls not only lists names and phone numbers, but also sorts them by the possibility and importance of persuasion. About 75% of the determinants of sequencing are basic information, including age, surname, race, neighborhood, and voting records.

Great effect

"We can predict who will donate online, who will send money through e-mail, and we can even model the volunteers," said a senior adviser to the campaign team. In the end, data modeling has become increasingly important in the campaign, much higher than it was in the 08, because we found that our time can be used more efficiently through this approach. ”

For example, the campaign has long identified the group of people who withdrew their campaign emails in the 08 election as their primary lobbying target, and the campaign strategists have even set up tests for specific groups. For example, the effect of local volunteer calls is much better than that of a volunteer from a non-swing state such as California State. As Jim Messina, the campaign commander, Messina, "there is hardly any assumption of numbers as a basis".

Fortunately, this huge database allows the campaign team to raise more money than expected. As of August, everyone on the Obama team thought they could not reach the 1 billion dollar funding target. "We've been arguing about this number because I don't think we can reach the target of 900 million dollars," said one senior campaign official. But after the summer, our internet drive began to show. ”

In fact, much of the money raised through the web is obtained through data-driven e-mail marketing, so data collection and analysis is crucial to the Obama campaign. During the campaign, many of the emails sent to supporters were just for testing, with different themes, senders, and content. There are sometimes "surveys" of what combinations can raise more money within the campaign, but the results are often inaccurate.

In the spring, Michelle Obama's e-mail Michelle the most outstanding results. But sometimes Messina's performance is more than that of Vice President Joe Biden Biden. In many cases, the people who raise the most money are more than 10 times times more than the underperforming.

Obama's Chicago headquarters also found that participants in the quick Donate program, which can donate via online or SMS, without having to repeat the credit card information, are 4 times times more likely to donate than other donors, so the plan was vigorously promoted later. At the end of October, the "Quick donation program" has become an important part of the campaign's message to supporters, and donors who first participated in the Quick donation program can also get a free trailer.

(Responsible editor: The good of the Legacy)