
How an app developer helped Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez make history - ummonk
https://mashable.com/article/reach-alexandria-ocasio-cortez
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ummonk
Traditional GOTV apps and phone / door-knocking procedures certainly worked
well for the Obama campaign, but that was in a different era where people
weren't saturated by pushy telemarketers and the like. I briefly tried
volunteering in the last election and stopped because I disliked the pushy
scripts that we would work off of to do targetted get-out-the-vote.

Seeing this article about Reach and its effectiveness was really refreshing;
talking to random people on the street and organically generating interest was
exactly the kind of volunteering I wanted to do.

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kakaorka
I think she offers a fresh perspective in American politics. I hope she
continues to do so in the future.

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caminante
Said app developer (who's primary source for the quotes and claims) undermines
the premise of the article:

 _> I’d like to think that there was an impact, but you can't see who votes
for who. I think it played a big role, especially in bringing out folks that
had not voted before._

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danso
He didn’t undermine himself. He’s reminding the interviewer that the app/tech
isn’t a magic window that allows him to know how voters voted. The full quote
which you excerpted makes clear that he thinks there was a “big role”:

> _After we won, we looked back, and Reach accounted for about 10 percent of
> our total positive IDs, or in other words, pledged voters. Reach was only
> deployed in the last three weeks before the primary. And the difference in
> the number of votes between Crowley and Ocasio was about 15 percent. So, I’d
> like to think that there was an impact, but you can 't see who votes for
> who. I think it played a big role, especially in bringing out folks that had
> not voted before._

Keep in mind that ACO was seen as a massive underdog to the incumbent. A 10
percent increase in identified pledged voters is huge in a primary.

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caminante
_> He didn’t undermine himself._

I didn't say this.

His quote (with or without the context of the paragraph) necessarily means
that his app's impact is not understood. If all we have are self-quotes,
that's weak support, too.

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tptacek
Maybe the NY primaries were different, but I don't know that turnout numbers
bear out any real material impact from efforts to turn out non-traditional
voters.

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patrickg_zill
Was there really any doubt that she would win, after she won the primary?
Isn't that area so reliably democratic that any primary winner is guaranteed
to have the seat?

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sigmar
It's about the primary upset.

>When Ocasio-Cortez faced off against 10-term incumbent Joe Crowley in the
Democratic primaries in June, the app played a pivotal role in her upset
victory, according to Sussan.

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funkythings
People like Cortez will only hurt the Democrats by moving them further left
and moving voters from the middle to alternatives other than democrats

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bryanrasmussen
Like the Green party? If it's the Green party you should say what you mean,
you know.

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funkythings
maybe, but 2016 told us a different story.

