Obama’s election team takes data mining to Las Vegas

President Barack Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign proved a landmark moment in political data mining — Obama’s team ran non-stop simulations based on poll data and used the information they’d collected about supporters to perfectly time appearances. But when the election was over, they were left with a fine-tuned machine that had outlived its purpose. The New York Times looks at where members of Obama’s campaign analytics team have gone since last year, whether that’s attempting to rethink commerce by putting like-minded people in touch or helping Caesars Palace keep its customers from defecting to other casinos. “When you go where the money is and you go where people get reached, you have a transformational effect,” says former campaign media tracking director Chauncey McLean. “Money creates change.”