The Victory Lab (52 page)

1
Running the federal Office of Economic Opportunity: Robert Levine, Harold Watts, Robinson Hollister, Walter Williams, and Alice O’Connor, “A Retrospective on the Negative Income Tax Experiments: Looking Back at the Most Innovative Field Studies in Social Policy,” in
The Ethics and Economics of the Basic Income Guarantee
, ed. Karl Widerquist, Michael Anthony Lewis, and Steven Pressman (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2005), 4.

2
Each season, scientists: David Salsburg,
The Lady Tasting Tea
(New York: Henry Holt, 2001), 5.

3
plots of rye, wheat, and potato: Ibid., 40.

4
Even though Rothamsted researchers: D. J. Finney, “The Statistician and the Planning of Field Experiments,”
Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series A (General)
119, no. 1 (1956): 1–27.

5
Not far from Fisher: Richard Doll, “Sir Austin Bradford Hill and the Progress of Medical Science,”
British Medical Journal
305, no. 6868 (December 19–26, 1992): 1521–26.

6
“chance was regarded as an enemy”: Harry M. Marks,
The Progress of Experiment: Science and Therapeutic Reform in the United States, 1900–1990
(Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 141.

7
But Hill thought that: Alan Yoshioka, “Use of Randomisation in the Medical Research Council’s Clinical Trial of Streptomycin in Pulmonary Tuberculosis in the 1940s,”
British Medical Journal
317, no. 7167 (October 31, 1998): 1220–23.

8
“It is obvious that no statistician”: A. B. Hill, “Principles of Medical Statistics: The Aim of the Statistical Method,”
Lancet
1 (1931): 41–43.

9
In 1943, a New Jersey chemist: Yoshioka, “Use of Randomisation.”

10
The “S” cases were to receive: “Streptomycin in Pulmonary Tuberculosis: A Medical Research Council Investigation,”
British Medical Journal
, October 30, 1948.

11
When, a few years later, Jonas Salk: Liza Dawson, “The Salk Polio Vaccine Trial of 1954: Risks, Randomization and Public Involvement in Research,”
Clinical Trials
1, no. 1 (February 2004): 122–30.

12
In 1962, the Food and Drug Administration: Marks,
The Progress of Experiment
, 230.

13
“well-controlled investigations”:
Code of Federal Regulations
, Food and Drug Administration, title 21, sec. 860.7.

14
They had selected three basic modes: Alan S. Gerber and Donald P. Green, “The Effects of Canvassing, Telephone Calls, and Direct Mail on Voter Turnout: A Field Experiment,”
American Political Science Review
94, no. 3 (September 2000): 653–63.

15
Putnam looked at declining membership: Robert D. Putnam,
Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000), 438–44.

16
Party organizations that had once mobilized: Steven J. Rosenstone and John Mark Hansen,
Mobilization, Participation, and Democracy in America
(New York: Longman, 2003), 162.

1
joined the committee as its research director: Interview with Mark E. Steitz, October 31, 1992, in
1992 Clinton Presidential Campaign Interviews
, Diane D. Blair Papers (MC 1632), University of Arkansas Libraries, Little Rock, Special Collections.

2
That gave analysts a granular unit: “Census Tracts and Block Numbering Areas, U.S. Census,
http://​www.census.gov/​geo/​www/​cen_​tract.​html
.

3
“He had worked for four years”: Quoted in Robin Toner, “Paul Tully Is Dead at 48; Top Democratic Strategist,”
New York Times
, September 25, 1992.

4
Party efforts were boosted: Steve Rosenthal, “Building to Win, Building to Last: The AFL-CIO Political Program,” in
Not Your Father’s Union Movement: Inside the AFL-CIO
, ed. Jo-Ann Mort (London: Verso, 1998), 104.

5
At the White House, an exultant Rove: Joshua Green, “The Rove Presidency,”
Atlantic
, September 2007.

6
Rove dubbed him: Karl Rove,
Courage and Consequence: My Life as a Conservative in the Fight
(New York: Threshold, 2010), 196.

1
“a kind of black art”: Quoted in Maureen Dowd, “Bush’s Top Strategists: Smooth Poll-Taker and Hard-Driving Manager,”
New York Times
, May 30, 1988.

2
Teeter was barely out of college: Daniel Golden, “The President’s Point Man,”
Boston Globe Magazine
, April 19, 1992.

3
hired the young Michigander: Biographical summary in finding aid to Robert M. Teeter Papers 1967–2004, Gerald R. Ford Library, Ann Arbor, Michigan.

4
spend more than $1 million: Lawrence R. Jacobs and Robert Y. Shapiro, “The Rise of Presidential Polling: The Nixon White House in Historical Perspective,”
Public Opinion Quarterly
59, no. 2 (Summer 1995): 163–65.

5
“Midwestern barometer”: Golden, “The President’s Point Man.”

6
“I had the best of both worlds”: Quoted in Tom Henderson, “The Merchants of Influence,”
Corporate Detroit
, June 1993.

7
one of the thirty largest: Randall Rothenberg, “The Boom in Political Consulting,”
New York Times
, May 24, 1987.

8
dabbling in election season punditry: Henderson, “The Merchants of Influence.”

9
Gage’s portfolio had become stocked with corporate clients: Ibid.

10
But in the 1980s: Thomas H. Davenport and Jeanne G. Harris,
Competing on Analytics: The New Science of Winning
(Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2007), 85.

11
In his 1964 novel: “In Memoriam: Eugene Leonard Burdick, Political Science: Berkeley,” University of California (System) Academic Senate, June 1967.

12
“They went through every poll”: Eugene Burdick,
The 480
(New York: Dell, 1964), 59.

13
“the underworld of cigar-chewing”: Ibid., 5.

14
“The new underworld is”: Ibid.

15
“This underworld, made up of psychologists”: Ibid., 7.

16
Pool wanted to predict: Ithiel de Sola Pool, Robert P. Abelson, and Samuel Popkin,
Candidates, Issues & Strategies: A Computer Simulation of the 1960 and 1964 Presidential Elections
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1964), 19.

17
compiling sixty-six pre-election polls: Ibid., 14.

18
“The Presidential election of 1960”: Ibid., 15.

19
his interest in how people made consumer decisions: Jean M. Converse,
Survey Research in the US: Roots & Emergence, 1890–1960
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), 136.

20
A major project was panel studies: Peter H. Rossi, “Four Landmarks in Voting Research,” in
American Voting Behavior
, ed. Eugene Burdick and Arthur J. Brodbeck (Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1959), 15.

21
“the psychology of choice”: Larry M. Bartels, “The Study of Electoral Behavior,” in
The Oxford Handbook of American Elections and Political Behavior
, ed. Jan E. Leighley (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 239.

22
“For many voters political preferences”: Bernard R. Berelson, Paul F. Lazarsfeld, and William N. McPhee,
Voting: A Study of Opinion Formation in a Presidential Campaign
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1954), 310.

23
“The lifelong Democrat”: Pool, Abelson, and Popkin,
Candidates, Issues & Strategies
, 12.

24
“the consequences of embitterment”: Thomas B. Morgan, “The People-Machine,”
Harper’s
, January 1961.

25
each copy numbered: Burdick,
The 480
, 7.

26
Inside was a ranking of thirty-two: Ithiel de Sola Pool and Robert Abelson, “The Simulmatics Project,”
Public Opinion Quarterly
25 (Summer 1961): 169–83.

27
Pool calculated that Simulmatics’ state rankings: Pool, Abelson, and Popkin,
Candidates, Issues & Strategies
, 57.

28
“This is the A-bomb of the social sciences”: Morgan, “The People-Machine.”

29
“We did not use the machine”: Quoted in “Top Aides Deny It: ‘Brain’ Assist Seen in Kennedy Campaign,” United Press International,
Los Angeles Times
, December 19, 1960.

30
In 1974, computer scientist Jonathan Robbin: Michael J. Weiss,
The Clustering of America
(New York: Harper & Row, 1988), xii.

31
customer surveys and block-level Census data: “Getting and Sending the Message,”
National Journal
, November 14, 1981.

32
Robbin’s computers assigned each ZIP code: Weiss,
The Clustering of America
, 4–5.

33
“King of the Zip Codes”: Ibid., xii.

34
his clustering system could be used for politics: Ibid., 217.

35
“The campaign was so carefully targeted”: Quoted ibid., 218.

36
“In 1987, the conventional labels”: Norman Ornstein, Andrew Kohut, and Larry McCarthy,
The People, the Press, & Politics: The Times Mirror Study of the American Electorate
(Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1988).

37
By the end of the 1980s: David Beiler, “Precision Politics; Technology and Circumstance Are Pushing Voter Files into the Driver’s Seat of the Campaign Bandwagon, but Who’s Got the Keys?,”
Campaigns & Elections
, February–March 1990.

38
A two-page summary of Claritas’s “Downtown Dixie-Style”: Weiss,
The Clustering of America
, 377.

39
In 1969, an Arkansas school bus manufacturer: “About Acxiom: Timeline & History,”
www.​acxiom.​com/​about_​us/​overview/​milestones/​Pages/​1969-​1979.​aspx
.

40
Charles Ward had decided: Robert O’Harrow Jr.,
No Place to Hide
(New York: Free Press, 2005), 38.

41
took the Acxiom name in 1988: “About Acxiom: Timeline & History.”

42
Between 1983 and 2004: O’Harrow,
No Place to Hide
, 43.

43
the state’s nearly two million independents: “Elections: Massachusetts Registered Voter Enrollment: 1948–2004,” Massachusetts Secretary of State Elections Division,
www.​sec.​state.​ma.​us/​ele/​eleenr/​enridx.​htm
.

44
the president’s national approval jumped: Eric Dienstfrey, “US: Bush Approval Avg (Gallup 2001–2008),”
Pollster.com
,
www.​pollster.​com/​blogs/​us_​bush_​approval_​avg_​gallup200.​php?nr=1
.

45
The front flap featured: “In the 11th Hour, Political Accusations Through the Mail,” graphic,
New York Times
, October 30, 2004.

46
When Bush had run an ad in March: Paul Farhi, “Bush Ads Using 9/11 Images Stir Anger,”
Washington Post
, March 5, 2004.

47
The story noted: Thomas B. Edsall and James V. Grimaldi, “On Nov. 2, GOP Got More Bang for Its Billion, Analysis Shows,”
Washington Post
, December 30, 2004.