63 Magazine - Issue 1

Analytics
for
Organizing
with Andrew Claster
One of the most
interesting things about
organizing is the many
diff erent types of people
you’ll fi nd working by your
side. Strategists generally
assume most organizers are
kids fresh out of college (or
pulled from college—hey!),
and that’s because there does
seem to be a lot of young people.
But as soon as you get comfortable
thinking everyone else in the organizer
training is just like you, you fi nd out
that guy over there is a lawyer, and the
woman next to you was a contestant on
Th e V o and i c e quite , a few people in the
room have left their high-paying corporate
jobs to join the same campaign you did.
This sort of thing happens a lot in
organizing, but I suspect that everyone
working on Obama’s fi rst presidential
campaign in Lebanon, Pennsylvania
was still shocked to discover that their
hardest working local fi eld organizer,
Andrew Claster, had a rich background
in political polling, a master’s degree
in economics, and the skillset that
could have easily landed him on the
campaign’s national analytics team.
Andrew, who now provides data and
analytics consulting for political
candidates and parties, non-profi ts, and
for-profi t organizations in the United States
and overseas, was raised on organizing.
His father, who was a civil rights worker
in Kentucky in the late 1950s and early
1960s, taught Andrew to canvass from an
early age. As a child, Andrew went with
his father on canvasses for the Eastern
Farmworkers Union in Bellport, Long Island
and participated in weekly pro-choice
demonstrations at a women’s health clinic
nearby. He began volunteering on various
campaigns in high school, and even got
arrested for participating in a peaceful labor
demonstration on his college campus.