Obama speaking to utility companies

So I heard on the radio this morning at Obama is holding a conference call with utility companies in the North East that were effected by Hurricane Sandy and have constituencies without power. 

I thought it was interesting that he is taking the time to put the pressure on utility companies to restore power, and I wonder if this pressure is tied to the upcoming election.  For example, I don't remember hearing that Obama spoke to utility companies in October 2011 when we had the fall snow storm and hundreds of thousands of people were also without power.

Restoring power is on the forefront of many people's minds right now, and if Obama can correlate himself to the simple pleasure of having someone's power back on he might get some more votes.    

Google News

So with just over one week to go until the election, I was curious what would get more coverage on Google News - the impending hurricane Sandy, or the election race.

Well Sandy won - but not much much.

There were 16 stories on Google US News.  7 of them (just under 50%) focused on the Sandy storm, 5 of them focused on the election, and 4 were additional stories.

It was also interesting that of the 5 election stories, 80% of them focused on Romney. Below are the headlines:

Minnesota poll shows Romney within 3

Harry Reid's Graveyard

Romney Campaign Focuses in Ohio

Newspaper Endorsement Boosts Romney

 

 

 

What is Aristotle Inc?

I was listening to the radio yesterday afternoon, and the commentator was talking about Aristotle Inc., which is a company that provides campaigns and politicians with data.  They can provide access to to voter lists, voter IQs, data matching, contributor data, congressional office data and so much more.  Their database includes:

• Information on voters from 3,100 counties 
• 190 million US records each with more than 500 attributes like voting histories, hobbies, demographics and more
• Political data from 157 nations
• The original files from more than 4,000 election boards, county clerks and voter registrars
• All of the information maintained by the election boards — such as party affiliation, race, exact age, vote history and school board districts into our files

Aristotle Inc also claims that:

Every U.S. President — Democrat and Republican — from Reagan through Obama, has used Aristotle products and/or services, as have many U.S. Senators, members of the U.S. House of Representatives, Democratic and Republican state party organizations and other major campaigns worldwide.

I find it fascinating that all of this information is mined and kept in one place. 

It was even more interesting that I could fill out an electronic form with all of my information, agree to a terms & service contract, and get a free online access to voter lists.  Is it really that easy to get information on the public? 

Who Out-Zingered Who?

According to ABC News:

President Obama out-zingered Mitt Romney in their final presidential debate by 3 to 1

The Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management, Quantified Impressions' looked at the candidate's performance and found:

• Obama deployed "pointed, purposeful, aggressive commentary" for a total of 240 seconds to Romney's 80 seconds

• Facial-expression expert Chris Kowal of Purdue University, who used a computer program to scrutinize Obama and Romney's underlying emotions throughout the debate, said Obama's expressions clearly displayed pride when he deployed both zingers.  

• Romney speaks more quickly than Obama, but uses words that are easier to understand \

• The foreign policy forum featured fewer moments of aggressive confrontation between the candidates. 

Check out the full report here. 

Gallup Poll Data

Gallup Poll

"Suppose the presidential election were held today, and it included Barack Obama and Joe Biden as the Democratic Party's candidates and Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan as the Republican Party's candidates. Who would you vote for?

(Each seven-day rolling average is based on telephone interviews with approximately 3,050 registered voters; Margin of error is ±2 percentage points.) 

"Vote For Somebody"

Remember that Carly Rae Jepsen song "Call Me Maybe" that came out this summer and was parodied by so many different groups - the US Olympic Swim Team, Jimmy Fallon, the Harvard Baseball Team - just to name a few.

Well a school in NYC recently released a version related to the upcoming election.

Harlem's Democracy Prep Hawk's fourth grade class turned the "Call Me Maybe" song into a message that encourages people to get out and vote.

Democracy Prep's amazing fourth grade scholars want YOU to vote this November 6th! The Harlem Prep Hawks sing their civic message loud and proud to the tune of Carly Rae Jepsen's "Call Me Maybe." A "Straight A" network, with 2,000 students across seven campuses in Harlem, NY and Camden, NJ, Democracy Prep is proving what is possible in urban education. We are preparing our responsible citizen-scholars to succeed in the college of their choice and a life of active citizenship. We hope they inspire YOU to Vote for Somebody! The scholars are hoping to get 100,000 views and likes.  

I think its great that young kids are being instilled with the importance of voting- hopefully this fun video will motivate people to register and get out there and vote!


Also check out the parody that Jay Leno did on Obama and Romney singing the 'Call me Maybe' song.