Moneyball and Politics
I posted this on DailyKos, so I thought I'd repost it here.
Fans of the Michael Lewis baseball book "Moneyball" will know that taking a hard look at statistics can offer insights that the human eye cannot. According to Lewis and his subject, Oakland A's general manager Billy Beane, baseball teams with limited payrolls can compete - and win - against overfunded franchises like the Yankees and Red Sox, if they have the creativity and determination to find inefficiencies in the game. On-base percentage, formerly a comparatively unheralded statistic, turned out to be just that kind of ineffiency. So the A's loaded up on undervalued players with major flaws but who walked a ton, and sure enough, Oakland was able to end up near the top of the league in runs scored - and in wins. That's Moneyball.
Here's what I've been wondering: could any of the lessons of Moneyball apply to the world of politics?
Here's an example: we all know early fundraising is crucial, right? But how much? Does anyone know the exact answer to that question? And we could ask similar questions about all sorts of aspects of campaign life: how important are early polls? How important are late polls? How bad a press story can a campaign handle? Does a big field staff really get the job done?
Most people reading this site can already give vague and general answers to these questions. But that's not good enough anymore: we need real numbers with real results. Billy Beane and his staff found out that every point of on-base percentage is worth three points of slugging percentage. Could they have figured that out just by sitting and watching a bunch of baseball games? Of course not. But they collected the numbers, crunched the data, and found immensely important conclusions. We can do the same with politics.
So I would love to hear feedback on this project. Is it feasible? Would anyone want to help collect the data, or help process it? Is anybody doing this already? I'd love to see what we could do; I say the possibilities are enormous.