63 Magazine - Issue 1

The Grass Is Greener:
Analytics
Department
Highlight
with Andrew Claster
What really goes on in those other
campaign departments you’re always
hearing about? You probably have a
basic idea, but we want to take a closer
look with you, every issue, so you can
truly understand how the work of other
departments on your campaign affects
what you do as an organizer and vice
versa.
Every department plays a role in
supporting organizers like you, so let’s see
what’s going on behind the scenes.
This issue we’re learning more about
analytics departments with Andrew Claster.
What does a campaign analytics
department do?
An analytics department on a political
campaign exists to help give decisionmakers
the tools and information they
need to make better decisions. These tools
can include a spreadsheet that ranks media
markets or voter targets, a caucus simulator,
a targeted list of voters, a predictive model,
a map displaying useful information, and
much more.
To do this, analytics teams analyze all of the
internal and external data that a campaign
has access to, including: the voter file, other
internal and external lists, volunteer data,
fundraising data, paid media data, polling
data, voter contact results, etc.
That’s A LOT of data.