Chance News 90
Quotations
“Early on election day, in two tight, tucked-away rooms at Obama headquarters …, the campaign's data-crunching team awaited the nation's first results, from Dixville Notch, a New Hampshire hamlet that traditionally votes at midnight.
“Dixville Notch split 5-5. It did not seem an auspicious outcome for the president.
[But t]heir model had gotten it right, predicting that about 50% of the village's voters were likely to support President Obama. …. And as the night wore on, swing state after swing state came in with results that were very close to the model's prediction. ….
“To build the ‘support model,’ the campaign in 2011 made thousands of calls to voters — 5,000 to 10,000 in individual states, tens of thousands nationwide — to find out whether they backed the president. Then it analyzed what those voters had in common. More than 80 different pieces of information were factored in — including age, gender, voting history, home ownership and magazine subscriptions.”
Los Angeles Times, November 13, 2012
Submitted by Margaret Cibes