It is an unprecedented leap of faith – the 76ers are the only NBA team to have a scouting system totally dependent on analytics staff.
By the end of the 2012 campaign Obama had 4.4 million donors, 16 million email addresses, 4,000 employees, 8,000 neighbourhood teams, 32,000 trained volunteers and an analytics staff knowledgeable enough of voting intention to be capable of predicting results in counties to within a percentage point.
Among analytics offices in the Civic Analytics Network, 68% have fewer than 10 employees, 42% have four or fewer employees and 16% have a single analytics staff person.
ESPN The Magazine and ESPN.com recently set out to rank the 122 professional sports teams across the four major U.S. leagues on the strength of their analytics staff, buy-in from executives and coaches, investment in biometric data and how much the team's approach is predicated on analytics.
Overseen by its internal analytics staff, the campaign also conducted parallel surveys in each state to help create and refine its microtargeting models and to provide far more granular analysis of voter subgroups.
The Obama campaign preferred such modeling over traditional brute-force voter ID calling, according to a member of the analytics staff, "because our support models more efficiently (and quite accurately) told us who supported us and who opposed us".
Ripken noted he was not as acrobatic as the lighter shortstops but made up for it with superior defensive positioning, an aspect of the game at which the Dodgers' analytics staff and front office excel.
The analytics staff also routinely combined all of their data sources -- Benenson's aggregate battleground survey, the state tracking polls, the analytical calls and even public polling data -- into a predictive model to estimate support for Obama and Romney in each state and media market.
Participants, all study staff, and analytic team members were masked to the randomization sequence.
Despite the fact that he raised a lot of money in July, his campaign is still sorely lacking in local staff, data analytics, and paid television ads.
