Posted on 02/07/2016 2:38:14 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
There were numerous articles published on Tuesday about the dynamic data operations that both the Cruz and Rubio campaigns employed to give them an edge on caucus night in Iowa. The Cruz data project is named the Oorlog project while the Rubio data effort is apparently called Optimus.
Cruz might have won Iowa, but Politico reported, "Rubio's analytics shop is stocked with Red Bull and a beer keg, a nacho cheese machine and an X box." Which means they are built for the long haul. I love reading the day after articles that allow us to peek inside the various campaigns.
Also from the Politico article was this nugget about the Trump campaign in Iowa, which I think is incredibly astute.
Trump's staff "got outclassed and outmaneuvered - the Iowa team simply didn't have the tools they needed, which is why they overpromised and underperformed," said a source close to the Trump campaign. "The Iowa team did an amazing job with the tools that they had, but that's like saying that al Qaeda did an amazing job in a battle with the U.S. Army because some al Qaeda fighters didn't get killed."
Here is the one thing I know about politics. There are nuggets of information in everything that gets reported, but no campaign is as great or as bad the headlines suggest. No doubt Cruz and Rubio had an advantage in Iowa over Trump, but there is also something rather simple that also allowed them succeed on Monday night - the caucus system itself.
It seems as if we spend countless hours explaining the uniqueness of the caucus system, but rarely do we every talk about some of its unique advantages and disadvantages. With a huge field of candidates on the Republican side, this is the first time it is easy to make some simple but powerful observations.
I'll just explain to you what happened in my precinct in Ankeny.
I arrived at my caucus location at 6:30 p.m. sharp, the parking lot at the Otter Creek Golf Course was already near capacity. By the time I made it to the clubhouse, a long line had already developed. The cars turning in looked like the iconic scene from Field of Dreams. Inside, registration was a mess, and the room was already full. Worse yet, there was a line of over 200 people needing new voter registrations.
In a primary setting, you walk in to your polling location, cast your ballot, and if you happen to be the observant type, you take note of how many people have already voted. In a caucus, you get to see and judge the total turnout in your precinct, and on Monday night, the large turnout allowed voters to make some last minute changes to whom they would vote for.
It was assumed that the large turnout and long line of newly registered Republicans would be good for Trump. That was not the case. Instead, many people who may have arrived at their caucus site intending to vote for lower tier candidate like Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, Carly Fiorina, Mike Huckabee, or Rick Santorum could make a last minute alteration and change their mind.
If you are a social conservative and you see that turnout, why vote for Huckabee or Santorum if you don't want to see Trump as the nominee? These voters probably broke hard for Cruz, but Rubio also benefited. Likewise, why stay firm and vote for Bush, Christie, or Fiorina if you think Trump might be vulnerable? These voters likely broke hard for Rubio.
Is data and analytics important? Sure, but on Monday night, you needed to be some data nerd to figure out what was going on. Iowa voters notoriously have a short list of candidate they like and could support, and when confronted with a huge turnout, many of them made a savvy decision to alter their vote at the last minute. Had Iowa been a simple primary, Trump probably runs away with the thing and Rubio is left in the dark.
Why I don't Think Cruz will win Iowa
"I don't think Texas Senator Ted Cruz can win Iowa.
As you have all seen on these pages before, I'm one of the few people who don't think Cruz's record matches the persona he's built since running for the United States Senate in 2012. I'm also not impressed with the campaign he put together in Iowa. For all the talk of the Cruz campaign's vaunted ground game and use of analytics, I think it's just that, talk.
One would think that a campaign using analytics would focus its efforts where the voters are, yet the Cruz campaign prioritized hitting all 99 counties with a couple long bus tours in remote parts of the state instead of concentrating their efforts where they need to be strong....."
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Something that did make a big difference in Cruz's win:
Remember the 2012 libertarian force in Iowa?
They were there on Iowa Caucus night for Ted Cruz.
That article gives the history. Very good read.
Total BS nonsense. Have this guy show one voter who switched his vote because he saw big turnout. A ludicrous theory. Virtually no one had surely ever even heard the idea that a big turnout would help Trump. That’s something only an uber political junkie would be thinking about.
“In 2012, 121,354 Republicans caucused in Iowa, setting a new record and helping propel Rick Santorum to a narrow victory over eventual nominee Mitt Romney. On Monday, according to estimates by Edison Research, 185,000 Republicans turned out, 46 percent of them attending their first GOP caucus. The large number and influx of first-time voters was widely expected to help Donald Trump, “but that was not how things went, raising the prospect that some of the voters who turned out were interested in stopping Mr. Trump, instead of propelling him to victory,” says Maggie Haberman at The New York Times.....”
In the US we are all Kings when we go into a voting booth.
Scripture tells us that God controls the heart of the King.
We will have His New Hampshire answer nest week.
That will be the real poll.
Yeah... and what are the chances that voters at a caucus are 'political junkies' ?
The author, according to the info you gave, seems to be a POLITICAL JUNKIE who would switch votes at the last minute because (all the cool kids are voting for xxx).
I wonder how many others like that there are, who just want to be able to say ‘they picked the winner’ by waiting to see who seems to be getting the most votes ?
” raising the prospect that some of the voters who turned out were interested in stopping Mr. Trump, instead of propelling him to victory,”
Isn’t that how many elections go ? Isn’t that what many say about this election ? They will vote for XXX Republican Candidate just to stop the XXX Democratic Candidate ?
Robinson definitely has misses as well as hits.
He didn’t go into detail about Trump’s ground game, which started out strong, with Chuck Laudner doing everything right. Then the Trump campaign inexplicably decided to rely exclusively on media and rallies instead of he or his representatives making personal contact.
The result? Apparently, many caucuses (even big ones in high profile areas) did not even have a designated speaker in behalf of Trump!
You boi Walker quit ...
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