The Victory Lab (53 page)
Authors: Sasha Issenberg
GEEKS VERSUS THE GURUS1
Podhorzer expected to have an election-year budget: Steven Greenhouse, “A.F.L.-C.I.O. Plans to Spend $44 Million to Unseat Bush,”
New York Times
, March 11, 2004.
2
the wealthy neophyte enlisted: Susan B. Glasser, “Winning a Stake in a Losing Race; Ad Commissions Enriched Strategists,”
Washington Post
, May 1, 2000.
3
a 1972 CBS News report:
CBS Evening News
, January 18, 1972,
www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HPnW4EBed4
.
4
In June 2002, a Senate staffer: Elisabeth Bumiller, “Red Faces in White House Over ’02 Analysis,”
New York Times
, June 14, 2002.
5
A
Washington Post
analysis of the $2.2 billion: Edsall and Grimaldi, “On Nov. 2, GOP Got More Bang for Its Billion.”
6
As a junior physics major at Princeton: John Aristotle Phillips and David Michaelis,
Mushroom: The Story of the A-Bomb Kid
(New York: Morrow, 1978), 19.
7
In 1983, their Aristotle Industries released: Scott Barancik, “Corporate Vigilante,”
Washington City Paper
, June 7, 1996.
8
In 1956, engineer Bill Fair: Eric Belsky and Allegra Calder, “Credit Matters: Low-Income Asset Building Challenges in a Dual Financial Service System,” Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University, BABC 04-1, February 2004.
9
able to cut delinquencies by one-quarter: Hollis Fishelson-Holstine, “The Role of Credit Scoring in Increasing Homeownership for Underserved Populations,” Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University, BABC 04-12, February 2004.
10
In 1989, the company introduced: Ibid.
11
“Copernicus took individuals out of the center”: Quoted in Yochi J. Dreazen, “Democrats, Playing Catch-up, Tap Database to Woo Potential Voters,”
Wall Street Journal
, October 31, 2006.
12
Capital One was the first credit-card company: Thomas H. Davenport and Jeanne G. Harris,
Competing on Analytics: The New Science of Winning
(Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2007), 41.
13
Throughout 2004, a Democratic consultant: Matt Bai,
The Argument: Billionaires, Bloggers, and the Battle to Remake Democratic Politics
(New York: Penguin Press, 2007), 23.
14
who had each given $20 million: Ibid., 9.
15
Already the company ran nearly fifty thousand experiments: Dan Gross, “What’s in Capital One’s Wallet?,”
Slate
, October 25, 2002,
www.slate.com/id/2073179/
.
WHEN SHAME PAYS A HOUSE CALL1
Bazerman had just published an article: K. M. O’Connor, C. K. W. deDreu, H. Schroth, B. Barry, T. Lituchy, and M. H. Bazerman, “What We Want to Do versus What We Think We Should Do,”
Journal of Behavioral Decision Making
15, no. 5 (August 2002): 403–18.
2
Cialdini had found repeatedly: R. B. Cialdini, R. R. Reno, and C. A. Kallgren, “A Focus Theory of Normative Conduct: Recycling the Concept of Norms to Reduce Littering in Public Places,”
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
58 (1990): 1015–26.
3
“self-expressive social behavior”: Todd Rogers, Alan Gerber, and Craig Fox, “Rethinking Why People Vote: Voting as Dynamic Social Expression,” in
The Behavioral Foundations of Policy
, ed. Eldar Shafir (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University, in press).
4
Their work relies on an unusual data set: Raymond E. Wolfinger and Steven J. Rosenstone,
Who Votes?
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1980), 4.
5
The Census Department’s Current Population Survey questions: “Short History of the CPS,” Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Bureau of the Census, accessed via
www.census.gov/history/www/programs/demographic/current_population_survey.html
.
6
a rolling panel of fifty-six thousand households: “Current Population Survey: Design and Methodology,” Technical Paper 63RV, U.S. Department of Labor and U.S. Department of Commerce, March 2002.
7
So they started matching respondents: John P. Katosh and Michael W. Traugott, “The Consequences of Validated and Self-Reported Voting Measures,”
Public Opinion Quarterly
45, no. 4 (Winter 1981): 519–35.
8
was designed to gently scold: Donald P. Green and Alan S. Gerber, “Introduction to Social Pressure and Voting: New Experimental Evidence,”
Political Behavior
32, no. 3 (2010): 331–36.
9
“Why do so many people fail to vote?”: Alan S. Gerber, Donald P. Green, and Christopher W. Larimer, “Social Pressure and Voter Turnout: Evidence from a Large-Scale Field Experiment,”
American Political Science Review
102 (February 2008): 33–48.
10
the idea of “norm compliance”: Cialdini et al., “A Focus Theory of Normative Conduct.”
11
“the message does not seem to matter much”: Donald P. Green and Alan S. Gerber,
Get Out the Vote! How to Increase Voter Turnout
, 1st ed. (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 2004), 36.
12
average 8-percentage-point boost from in-person canvasses: Allison Dale and Aaron Strauss, “Don’t Forget to Vote: Text Message Reminders as a Mobilization Tool,”
American Journal of Political Science
53, no. 4 (October 2009): 787–804.
13
“Face-to-face interaction makes politics”: Green and Gerber,
Get Out the Vote!
, 41.
14
“To mobilize voters, you must”: Ibid., 92.
15
Rogers described an experiment that he and Gerber: Todd T. Rogers, “Experiments in Political Communications: Citizenship Behavior and Political Decision Making,” Ph.D. diss., Department of Organizational Behavior and Psychology, Harvard University, 2008.
16
They knew that personal contact was almost always: Summarized in
Young Voter Mobilization Tactics: A Compilation of the Most Recent Research on Traditional & Innovative Voter Turnout Techniques
, Center for Information and
Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) and Young Voter Strategies, George Washington University Graduate School of Political Management.
17
Green drove up to Hooksett: Donald P. Green and Alan S. Gerber,
Get Out the Vote: How to Increase Voter Turnout
, 2nd ed. (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 2008), 111.
18
boozy men’s-only events: Elizabeth Addonizio, Donald Green, and James M. Glaser, “Putting the Party Back into Politics: An Experiment Testing Whether Election Day Festivals Increase Voter Turnout,”
Political Science & Politics
40 (2007): 722.
SHOWDOWN AT THE OASIS1
While Dole dominated news coverage: Gerald M. Boyd, E. J. Dionne Jr., and Bernard Weinraub, “Bush vs. Dole: Behind the Turnaround,”
New York Times
, March 17, 1988.
2
Carney put a plaque: John Aloysius Farrell, “Pomposity Eludes N.H. Aide to Bush,”
Boston Globe
, March 20, 1991.
3
Bush adviser Mary Matalin called Carney: “Trio Have Backed Governor for Years,”
San Antonio Express-News
, October 23, 2006.
4
The neighborhood surrounding Carney’s office: Matea Gold, “Alexandria, Va., Hosts a Quiet Hub of Republican Power,”
Los Angeles Times
, January 20, 2011.
5
Rove had dropped out: Nicholas Lemann, “The Controller,”
The New Yorker
, May 12, 2003.
6
The trip triggered an ethics investigation: R. G. Ratcliffe, “Perry travel paid for by others,”
Texas Politics
blog,
San Antonio Express-News
and
Houston Chronicle
, July 26, 2009,
blog.mysanantonio.com/texas-politics/2009/07/perry-travel-paid-for-by-others
.
7
Strayhorn stood at an Austin high school: Gardner Selby, “Strayhorn to Run as Independent,”
Austin American-Statesman
, January 3, 2006.
8
political scientists believed they could explain all presidential elections: Daron R. Shaw,
The Race to 270: The Electoral College and the Campaign Strategies of 2000 and 2004
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), 22.
9
An average of seven academic election-forecasting models: Christopher Wlezien, “On Forecasting the Presidential Vote,”
Political Science and Politics
34, no. 1 (March 2001): 24–31.
10
responded by adjusting the economic indicators: Larry M. Bartels and John Zaller, “Presidential Vote Models: A Recount,”
Political Science and Politics
34, no. 1 (March 2001): 9–20.
11
“While experiments allow researchers to isolate the influence”: Daron R. Shaw, “The Effect of TV Ads and Candidate Appearances on Statewide Presidential Votes, 1988–96,”
American Political Science Review
93, no. 1 (June 1999): 345–61.
12
“I think people are finally starting”: Brittany Barrientos, “Perry Begins Campaign Trail in Texas Tech Area,”
Daily Toreador
, January 11, 2006.
13
“It wasn’t until that moment”: Quoted in Charles T. Royer, ed.,
Campaign for President: The Managers Look at ’92
(Hollis, NH: Hollis, 1994), 266.
MODELS AND THE MATRIX1
the three dozen field offices it eventually opened: John McCormick, “No. 37 in Iowa for Obama Offices,”
Swamp Politics
blog,
Chicago Tribune
,
www.swamppolitics.com/news/politics/blog/2007/11/no_37_in_iowa_for_obama_office.html
.
2
the state director, Paul Tewes, lobbied Kucinich: David Plouffe,
The Audacity to Win
(New York: Viking, 2009), 127.
3
the share of voters under the age of twenty-five had tripled: Analysis by CIRCLE (the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning & Engagement), “Revised Estimates Show Higher Turnout Than Expected; Iowa Youth Turnout Rate More Than Triples; 65,000 Iowans Under the Age of Thirty Participate in the Caucuses,” January 4, 2008,
www.civicyouth.org/PopUps/PR_08_Iowa_turnout_Jan4.pdf
.
4
was still finishing his dissertation on robotics: Rahaf Harfoush,
Yes We Did: An Inside Look at How Social Media Built the Obama Brand
(Berkeley, CA: New Riders, 2009), 162.
5
There were the thirteen million people: Craig McLurg, “Inside WebTrends Engage 2009: Obama Data Crunchers,”
Web Analytics World
, April 8, 2009,
www.webanalyticsworld.net/2009/04/inside-webtrends-engage-2009-obama-data.html
.
6
There were the three million donors: Michael Luo, “Study: Many Obama Small Donors Really Weren’t,”
The Caucus
blog,
New York Times
, November 24, 2008,
thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/24/study-obamas-small-donors-really-werent/
.
7
“Because of you”: Barack Obama’s Remarks in St. Paul, as provided by CQ Transcriptions,
New York Times
, June 3, 2008,
www.nytimes.com/2008/06/03/us/politics/03text-obama.html?pagewanted=all
.
8
headquarters in a former Wild Oats natural foods market: Jeff Mapes, “Obama Opens a Mega-Office in Portland,”
Jeff Mapes on Politics
blog,
Oregonian
, March 28, 2008,
blog.oregonlive.com/mapesonpolitics/2008/03/obama_opens_a_megaoffice_in_po.html
.
