I keep fighting the same battle. On Quora and Klout, I keep getting asked to establish my bonafides as a social media expert. I keep telling the algorithms at those sites that I’m not an expert. They don’t seem to believe me. Oddly, over the last few years, I’ve become reasonably adept at understanding how to use […]
Nate Silver is on record (somewhere) as saying that he was greatly relieved when the most likely outcome of the 2012 election was the actual outcome. He had build a model of what was going to happen that represented the probabilities of certain occurrences. People incorrectly interpreted this as predictions that could be right or […]
Nice piece here on Cory Booker’s tweeting. In particular, the point about using social media to govern as opposed to simply campaign. The sustainability of it is an issue, especially as his audience grows. But this could be a good lesson for city councillors… How to Tweet Like Cory Booker.
OK, I’m not the first to say this at all, but really. Let’s stop polling to see who is ahead in elections. Horse race polling, as it’s called, is a masturbatory exercise when done internally by candidates or parties and provides no valuable insight when done externally. Internal polls are either dismissed or used to […]
The SK NDP leadership race just went through a sprint to the finish for memberships. Memberships purchased prior to January 25th allowed people to vote in the leadership race. Those purchased after the deadline are not permitted to do so. I’m sure the reasons for this are good (or if they’re not, they’ll be changed), […]
Originally posted on Averagely Unorthodox:
Whew! Back from the holidays. I hope everyone had a great one. Going to do a little re-post here, since we are running behind a little. This is my most recent post on our company blog. Check us out on Facebook if you like the post. We write about politics…
Originally posted on SeattleRobin Ruminates:
A new article from The Atlantic provides an in-depth look at the four-state victory in November for marriage equality, going back to earlier roots and discussing behind the scenes decision making and strategizing. It goes into quite a bit of detail about things I summarized in a recent post here.…
I’m in the middle of reading Sasha Issenberg’s fascinating book, “The Victory Lab”, which purports to expose the ‘secret science’ of winning campaigns. In fact, it’s not so secret, but instead discusses (gasp) evidence-based actions resulting from randomized experiments. To an academic (and, apparently, especially a non-political scientist), this comes as no shock. It makes […]
I’ve posted a few optimistic posts lately, but tonight is Christmas Eve, and I’m feeling pessimistic. Much of my optimism has been related to watching particular kinds of campaigns by organizations like Avaaz, MoveOn, the Center for Biological Diversity, the Obama campaigns, and other, progressive, grassroots-based campaigns that seem to genuinely tap into existing concerns […]
If you’re not aware of #idlenomore (e.g., you’re not from Canada), go lurk on the Twitter hashtag for a bit or search Facebook. Put simply, it’s an activist response to an omnibus bill (C-45) that, in part, proposes massive and disturbing changes to the way that corporations interact with First Nations’ land. That said, the […]
