In politics, the era of big data has arrived

This is a really interesting article from Time about the quantitative data analysis that was carried out to ensure that Obama won the 2012 election.

It explores a previously secret department of Obama's campaign team that was tasked with number crunching on a phenomenal scale. By first merging all the data sets the campaign team had on Obama's voters (a task which took 18 months) they were then able to create models of Obama's potential voters, see what type of person was likely to donate to the campaign, assess when was the best time to screen campaign ads on the television, and even simulate the election night to see where they had to spend their budget to increase their chances.

On Nov. 4, a group of senior campaign advisers agreed to describe their cutting-edge efforts with TIME on the condition that they not be named and that the information not be published until after the winner was declared. What they revealed as they pulled back the curtain was a massive data effort that helped Obama raise $1 billion, remade the process of targeting TV ads and created detailed models of swing-state voters that could be used to increase the effectiveness of everything from phone calls and door knocks to direct mailings and social media.

Read the whole article here: http://swampland.time.com/2012/11/07/inside-the-secret-world-of-quants-and-data-crunchers-who-helped-obama-win/