What's more, Anderson said, Cantor's loss has made their pitch much easier: "I think this was a real wakeup call for folks." "It's really hard to convince a large culture of consultants and operatives to throw away the things they used to do and think about things in an entirely new way," said Anderson.īut they point to Democratic firms like BlueLabs - comprised of the Obama 2012 analytics team - and Civis Analytics, as examples of how similar strategies have been successfully implemented. The gurus, after all, like being in charge, and much of the lucrative political campaign industry is built around the silo-centric model they want to explode.
Ruffini and Anderson concede their vision won't be easily realized. Anderson, meanwhile, comes from a more traditional opinion research background, working as vice president of the D.C.
More recently, as the tech and political climates have shifted, he has specialized in data analytics. Bush's 2004 campaign, and "eCampaign director" at the RNC. Ruffini began blogging in the early 2000s, and quickly became one of the GOP's foremost digital operatives, filling his résumé with of-the-time titles like "webmaster" for George W. The two strategists are well-positioned to pioneer a more integrated approach. "These are things that shouldn't be treated individually by separate operatives who are siloed off in different parts of the organization." or analysis of social data," said Anderson. "There are things you can learn from a focus group that are unique and important, and they're different from the things you can learn from a telephone poll.
Traditionally, he said, campaigns are made up of competing factions, with pollsters in one corner, digital staffers in another, and a Stuart Stevens-like guru at the head of the organization, making decisions after he hears out his staffers' arguments.Įchelon will seek to overturn that model by combining those efforts into one comprehensive intel-gathering operation. "The idea is to have data and information as the nerve center and the hub of how decisions are being made on campaigns, instead of just relying on the highest-paid person's opinion," said Ruffini. In an interview with BuzzFeed, Echelon Insights' co-founders, veteran GOP digital strategist Patrick Ruffini and pollster Kristen Soltis Anderson, said the new firm will merge the campaign crafts of telephone surveys, focus groups, and data analytics to help Republican clients rethink the way they deploy resources and shape their messages. With Eric Cantor's surprise primary defeat still fresh in Republicans' minds, a new opinion research firm is launching this week that aims to fix the GOP's increasingly dire polling problem, bring the party up to speed in the election data wars, and upend the way political campaigns are run.
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