Political

Years of effort, mountains of hype, billions of dollars – and Obama finally catches up with UK

President Obama talks to the crew of Atlantis from the Oval Office (P052009PS-0698).
President Obama on the phone in the Oval Office (P052009PS-0698) by NASA HQ PHOTO is licensed under CC-BY-NC-ND 2.0.

I’ve commented often enough in the past about our obsession in the UK with US politics. We love referring repeatedly to the US even when it clearly isn’t the best place to look (want to talk TV debates? how about looking at a country with a multi-party Parliamentary system to see how its TV debates work instead of obsessing about 1960s America?).

We also often slip into an inferiority complex, as if what’s in the US is automatically bigger, better, smarter and all round got more of the wooo wooo than what we do in Britain.

But take a cool read of praises of the Obama ground campaign such as this one and what have you really got? A description of the sort of polling day operation political parties in the UK have been doing for years.

Welcome to the 20th century, Mr President.

2 responses to “Years of effort, mountains of hype, billions of dollars – and Obama finally catches up with UK”

  1. The key is surely the combination of 'people-centred' and 'data-driven'. Do British political parties run large randomised experiments before deciding how to train their volunteers? do they have the same sophisticated analysis of data about specific voters?

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