Mr. Dreschler's office is so small, if he sneezed, his two employees would probably have to go home sick.
ANDREW DRESCHLER: "Our office is relatively small. But, it’s, in our server room we have power -- our IT director one time said we have enough power to power a company of three thousand employees.”
Let’s say there are four million people in a state -- a state like Kentucky. Mr. Dreschler and his employees cannot talk to all of them. But they can use an automated telephone service to call ten thousand of them and ask who they plan to vote for. The data miners add those responses to the other data points they have about those people.
From there, they use their computer power to crunch the numbers. The goal is to predict how the people they did not talk to -- the other three million nine hundred ninety thousand -- will vote.
ANDREW DRESCHLER: "Whatever question that we ask we can model and show the likelihood of every voter in the state supporting -- er, responding to that question as if we did talk to everybody.
STEVE EMBER: So how do campaigns use that information? Mr. Dreschler stands up and gets a framed map off the wall.
ANDREW DRESCHLER: "Our offices are no-thrills offices, but this is just a -- we do have a couple maps and campaigns that we’re particularly proud of."
The map shows Iowa in the Midwest, the American heartland. Iowa traditionally votes at the beginning of the presidential nominating season.
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2013-11-25
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