Sunday, November 11, 2012

Big Data and The Republican Loss

This is more of a question than an observation, which is why I've posted it on a Sunday (I'm not expecting an answer and I'm assuming most professional users are out or not reading blogs & Twitter ).

I've been reading a fair bit this weekend about Orca, Mitt Romney's voter assessment software, built by an anonymous supplier on a Microsoft platform.

According to various articles, Orca suffered stability and accuracy issues in the run-up to the election last week. Something many people are now claiming cost The Republicans the Presidency of The USA.

Orca was apparently built pretty hastily 7 months ago to rival the effect of a similar piece of kit used successful by The Democrats in 2008 and wheeled-out and improved upon again this year. Both systems apparently crunch 'big data' to identify likely voters and contributors for their respective parties. Only Orca didn't deliver.... It apparently crashed, locked out users and couldn't handle the data entry required of it.

So my question is simply this... If Mitt Romney is from such a prestigious financial management background (Bain), where spreadsheets have been the backbone of accurate decision making for over a decade ... then how come it was this crucial element that was so weak in The Republican campaign?

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