This article buried in the Saturday’s New York Times reports that the Obama campaign has invested heavily in microtargeting.

Microtargeting uses computers and mathematical models to take disparate bits of information about voters — the cars they own, the groups they belong to, the magazines they read — and analyze it in a way to predict how likely a person is to vote and what issues and values are most important to him. Often these analyses turn up surprising results; for instance, Democrats have taken advantage of the fact that many evangelical Christians are open to hearing a pro-environmental message.

Though this is technique has long been favored by the Republican party, especially during the 2000 Bush campaign, even Republicans agree that he “Obama campaign has appropriated it and taken it to a new level.”

One of the largest data banks is Catalist, a for-profit company that specializes in providing data for the Obama campaign. Turns out its chief technology officer is 34 year old Vijay Ravindran, former director of the ordering-services group at Amazon.com, where he led a team of about 130 engineers who built and maintained the site’s “shopping cart.

From the Washington Post:

The work being done in Catalist’s McPherson Square offices—which, with its multiscreen computer terminals, resembles a Silicon Valley start-up—is helping revolutionize the fields known as data mining and microtargeting. … Catalist was founded in August 2005 by Harold Ickes, the longtime Clinton deputy White House chief of staff, after the 2004 campaign to address the Democrats’ inability to harness data. One of the first hires was a young engineer, Vijay Ravindran. … “With my hiring, he made a decision that this was going to be a real company,” Ravindran says. As the chief data-architecture guy at Catalist, he’s part of a new trend in political technology: As data become more important in campaigning, candidates are increasingly turning to the tech industry for business-level expertise.

In a feature on political strategists and microtargeting, from fastcompany.com [via the newstab, thanks brijo1], Ravindran says:

“In the political space, I felt it was very important to build a computing architecture that would take in real-time data, get them into a standardized format, and then load them into a place where they could be snapshotted out for particular purposes. That didn’t exist before. Now we have an architecture that scales more than 15 terabytes of data while providing an interface for users to work with. We expect to leave this election cycle with a piece of permanent infrastructure that enables groups to do microtargeting more efficiently than ever before. It all boils down to one principle: Leave no data behind.”

Below the fold is a video where Ravindran talks a little bit about what he does. Continue reading →

As the election nears, it is crucial to understand just how important this election will be for our community. Just a few years ago, the concept of major South Asian campaign groups, let along major South Asian candidates, was unthinkable. South Asians were a small group that didn’t get out to the polls in sizable numbers and those who did were usually spoken to solely on the issues of immigration and U.S.-India relations. This election, however, has dramatically changed the nature of the South Asian community’s involvement in politics. India Post recently had a great piece where they highlighted a few young South Asians who have been making their voice heard this election season, and it gives a good overview of how our community has mobilized this year.

The article profiles South Asians from a variety of backgrounds, all motivated to become active during this election season for different reasons. Bhavini Dhoshi, 25, is “currently working as a legal intern for a not-for-profit immigration services organization,” and especially cares about reproductive rights, the environment, and healthcare, amongst other issues. Shashi Dholandas, a 24-year old young law student, counts “the current state of the economy and the US standing in the international arena” as his major concerns. Niki Shah, an organizer with South Asians for Obama, says “My generation is overburdened with the cost of education. We want a decent education but the attached cost may outweigh the long-term benefits.”

The profiles are interesting and definitely worth a read, and are notable because of the breadth of interests and activities of the surveyed group. The article does mention U.S.-India relations, and these are surely important issues for members of our community, be they immigrants who once called a South Asian nation their home, or the children of those immigrants. Yet for every single young South Asian, these issues were secondary to topics such as healthcare, the environment, the war, or the economy.

At the DNC, Hrishi Karthikeyan, the founder of South Asians for Obama, noted that one of the reasons he started SAFO was because he wanted politicians and campaigns to realize that there were many South Asians for whom every issue was important, just as they would be for any American. For far too long, politicians had felt as though they only needed to talk to South Asians about issues such as immigration and U.S.-India relations, and they would have their vote. The massive activation in this campaign is changing this perception as more South Asians get involved and voice their concerns on every issue of importance. In this campaign, Indian-Americans have played a major role in issues concerning foreign policy, domestic policy, and finance, amongst other issues. Over the past year, one Indian-American has shined as the governor of a very Southern state while another is in a tight congressional race in Minnesota.

South Asians have worked hard in this election to rise from a small niche group to an important part of the electorate. Groups such as SAFO, Asian Americans for Obama, and non-partisan groups including SAALT have put forth their best efforts to transform the South Asian vote into a prominent piece of the American electoral map. It will all be for naught, however, if we don’t vote en masse this Tuesday. So tomorrow, your vote is not only about the direction of this country, but our community’s place in the American political spectrum. The choice between non-voting and voting is the choice between leaving our community a niche group that will always be on the periphery of the political scene or helping us emerge as a crucial bloc that can make our voices heard for many elections to come. Continue reading →

Sikhs are a fairly small group of voters in America, so I’m always intrigued when a candidate reaches out to us.

I expected the Obama campaign to issue Diwali greetings and figured he’d direct it to Hindus, Sikhs and Jains. But I was quite surprised when the Obama campaign also sent a letter to the American Gurudwara Parbandhak Committee to wish everybody a happy Tercentenary Celebration of the Guruship of Sri Guru Granth Sahib. It is a big holiday for Sikhs, but not one I expected any national politician to notice. (There were no official greetings from the McCain camp for either holiday)

As I’ve written before, these sorts of emails to the community are fairly cheap in terms of effort, and are a nice way to build good will, even if they tell you little about a candidate.

More important than holiday greetings was the difference in response by campaigns to the Sikh Coalition‘s first ever Voter Guide for Sikh Americans. The Sikh Coalition is non-profit and non-partisan. Their guide invited responses from all presidential candidates (not just the major ones) including the Green Party, Socialist Party, Libertarian Party and even such ultra-fringe parties as the Prohibition Party and the Boston Tea Party.

They received extensive replies from Obama (Democratic Party) and Gloria Riva (Party of Socialism and Liberation) and shorter replies from Ralph Nader (Independent Party) and Gene Amondson (Prohibition Party). The GOP did not reply.

The fact that the GOP failed to respond to the survey was very telling. They could easily have filled out the first question, about interaction with Sikh voters and constituents, since McCain was actually involved in the official response to Balbir Singh Sodhi’s murder in Mesa, AZ in 2001. And the GOP has enough staff that they could have tasked somebody to fill the entire questionnaire out. No, the message associated with their lack of response was quite clear. A campaign won’t bother responding to a questionnaire if they’ve already written that bunch of voters off. (That factoid is actually from Audacity of Hope)

Continue reading →

In the last few days before the election, I wanted to revisit each campaign’s efforts to reach out the desi voters.

Indians for McCain has new material on their website, including a “Candidate Comparison On Indian-Americans” (sic) which forms an interesting contrast to South Asians for Obama‘s “Barack Obama: Working for South Asian Americans” and Obama vs. McCain Comparison Sheet handouts. The differences between the two websites recapitulate both differences between the campaigns but also differences within our community.

The difference in group names reveals their important differences in their attitudes. Indians for McCain is focussed both on Indo-Americans and on India’s relationship to America. Their candidate comparison covers only American foreign policy towards India, contrasting the candidates efforts on these three topics:

• On doing business with India
• On the US-India Civil Nuclear Deal
• On the U.S. pushing the G8 to include India

This is material designed to appeal to voters who are first generation immigrants, for whom issues of America’s treatment of India are paramount.

[There is also a group called SouthAsians for McCain but they have less material on their website and they are really an Indian-American group. Their banner includes the Indian flag and map, and they have an extensive section on McCain’s views on Indo-American relations which is exerpted from the Indian Express article on this topic]

SAFO’s approach instead stresses Asian American issues broadly. Their candidate comparison sheet is actually the campaign’s generic comparison sheet on all AAPI issues, covering topics such as college costs, immigration, minority health services, and compensation for Japanese American internment during WWII.

This handout is available in Hindi and Urdu, which is an odd choice since I doubt recent non-English speaking immigrants will see themselves as enough part of the Asian American community to care about the Filipino Veterans Equity Act of 2007.

Continue reading →

Election Day is on TUESDAY NOVEMBER 4th and a state of Election fatigue/delirium has settled in like a fog creeping across the country (or maybe just with me). The folks at Projekt NewSpeak put out this short documentary on the importance of the ‘Asian American Vote’ and if they are going to swing the vote this Election cycle (via AngryAsianMan).

Even though the film generally refers to Asian American voters, they used the very desi ‘Macaca effect’ as their prime example. As was blogged about quite often here at Sepia Mutiny, the slurring of S.R. Sidarth a ‘macaca’ by George Allen essentially swung the vote in Virginia to Jim Webb by 0.5% (read Amardeep’s previous analysis here).

Desis may not have critical mass to swing the presidential vote (especially given the electoral college system) but as ‘33% of Asian Indians likely to vote are undecided voters’ a critical event at the local level could swing the vote. Especially with local politics such as Senate, Congress, County-wide and City seats. Neighborhoods with high South Asian concentrations where I was thinking this could be possible for Tuesday’s election were Chicago, New Jersey, Bay area, Minneapolis, pockets of FL, Detroit/Ann Arbor and of course, Virginia.

What say you? In your precinct/city/state, do you have a critical mass of voting desis that your community could swing the vote should a racist event occur on the campaign trail? Do you think the film is right in saying that as ‘Asian Americans’ we have the potential to swing the vote a la ‘Macaca effect’ once again? Is what is happening with Ashwin Madia this year’s Macaca moment? Continue reading →

In my last post on the racial turn in the Minnesota 3rd District Congressional race, I left open the possibility that the rhetoric being used against Ashwin Madia might not turn into a pattern. Now there is no doubt.

On the left below are publicly available images of Madia. On the right, you see the images as presented in a recent Republican attack ad (“Running to Raise Taxes”; view it here):

From KARE 11, an NBC affiliate in the Twin Cities, Minnesota:

A Republican attack ad invites viewers to “meet the real Ashwin Madia,” but the still photos featured in the spot present a noticeably darker version of the 3rd District DFL congressional candidate.

“At least three of the photos of Madia were obviously darkened, using one method or another,” public affairs and media consultant Dean Alger told KARE 11.

He said the viewing public has grown accustomed to hearing distorted claims, or statements and votes used out of context. However, Alger asserts the altered images of Madia, the son of Indian immigrants, crosses a line. (link)

Just in case readers need a Razib-ian reminder of why this is bad, here is a bit more:

Continue reading →

Via Andrew Sullivan, a smart quote from Ross Douthat regarding Bobby Jindal’s prospects for 2012:

If anything, I think the way the McCain campaign has finished up — and the way the media has covered it — works to Jindal’s advantage in 2012: Conservatives are going to be extremely eager to prove that they only hate Obama because he’s a radical, not because they’re racist, and what better way to demonstrate that than to nominate a dark-skinned conservative with a funny-sounding name? Indeed, much of the current affection for Jindal among movement conservatives – and especially in talk-radio land – can be traced to precisely such a yearning for a conservative Obama: A multicultural prince who channels Ronald Reagan, and whose nomination would at least reduce the taint of racism that clings to the American Right.(Ross Douthat, link)

Yes, that’s why I thought, many months ago, that Jindal would have made a good VP choice for McCain. (I expect it will come out, in months to come, that McCain specifically asked Jindal to join the ticket this past summer and Jindal turned him down.).

The above argument is in response to a point from Christopher Orr at The New Republic that I think many on the left (including our own Ennis) have agreed with:

Though rarely explicit (and certainly not exclusive) a large portion of the GOP’s closing argument this cycle has been to stoke white, working class fear and suspicion of the Other. The dark-skinned man with the foreign-sounding name may be a Muslim, or a socialist, or a friend of terrorists, or a racial huckster, or a fake U.S. citizen, or some other vague kind of “radical.” You may never be sure which he is (maybe all of the above), but in your gut you simply don’t “know” him the way you know the other candidates. This is not, to put it mildly, a message likely to benefit Bobby Jindal. (Christopher Orr, link)

For Douthat, by contrast, the attempt to “otherize” Obama is a combination of things, involving not just his skin color and name, but also his academic background, history as an urban community organizer, and membership in a liberation theology church:

I think this vastly, vastly overestimates the extent to which the attempt to “Otherize” Obama has been about race qua race (and racism qua racism), and vastly underestimates the extent to which it’s been about the way Obama’s name, ancestry and skin color have dovetailed with other aspects of his background – from his liberation-theology church to the academic-lefty and urban-machine milieu in which he spent much of his early political career – that the GOP would have tried to play up against any Democratic candidate (and especially in a year when the party didn’t have much else going for it). (Ross Douthat, link)

All in all, an interesting exchange.

I think it is certainly true that the GOP has been stoking up xenophobia (have you seen this?) through its attempt to smear Obama as “palling around with terrorists” (Rashid Khalidi being the latest smear), and with the whole “Who is the real Barack Obama?” line of thought.

But Douthat’s point of view — that this is merely a cynical, tactical attack, not based on fundamental beliefs amongst the leadership — gives me some hope that this will not become a chronic line of attack should Obama win the election next week. Continue reading →