Margin of Victory: How Technologists Help Politicians Win Elections

(Hardback)

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Description

This book illuminates modern political technology, examining important technologies, companies, and people; putting recent innovations into historical context; and describing the possible future uses of technology in electoral politics. Despite a decade of political technology's celebrated triumphssuch as online fundraising of the presidential campaigns of McCain in 2000, Dean in 2003, and Obama in 2008; or the web-enabled, socially networked campaign of Obama 2008the field of e-politics is still at an unsolidified stage. Margin of Victory: How Technologists Help Politicians Win Elections offers an unprecedented insiders' view of the fast-changing role of political technology that explains how innovations in the use of new media, software tools, data, and analytics hold yet untapped potential. Contributions from leading practitioners in this highly specialized field cover everything from political blogs to targeting mobile devices to utilizing software created specifically to manage campaigns. The book documents how political technology is still in an early stage, despite its enormous advances in recent years, and how the strategies that work today will inevitably be superseded as new technologies arrive and potential voters become less receptive to the previous campaign's tactics.

Reviews

[T]here is a plethora of knowledge here that will be useful for strategists, politicians, and academics who want to understand how technology was used in the past, how it is being used in the present, and how it should be used in the future. * Presidential Studies Quarterly *

Author Bio

Nathaniel G. Pearlman is the founder of NGP Software, Inc. (now NGP VAN, Inc.), a large firm that has assisted Democrats and their allies in fundraising, compliance, organizing tools, and new media since 1997. He has worked in the field of political technology for more than two decades, and is president of Timeplots, LCC, a creative analytic design and niche information enterprise.