Dylan Matthews interviews Sasha Issenberg, the author of “The Victory Lab”, which is about how political campaigns are increasingly applying social science research techniques.
It turns out that Democrat campaigns tend to apply these techniques more than Republicans, unsurprisingly, since academic researchers with knowledge of these techniques tend to lean left. However, Matthews notes that a lot of the important research in this area was done during the campaign of Republican governor Rick Perry in 2006. And why is that? According to Issenberg:
The reason Perry developed that partnership is that he made them an unusual offer, which is that they could publish their work.
Via Kevin Drum.
Surfing Complexity 