"To discover to the world something which deeply concerns it, and of which it was previously ignorant; to prove to it that it had been mistaken on some vital point of temporal or spiritual interest, is as important a service as a human being can render to his fellow creatures..." John Stuart Mill, "On Liberty"
Tuesday, February 25, 2014
In politics, demographics are destiny
We know that there are powerful demographic trends taking place in the US. That the economic divide in America is widening at an almost geometric pace. That certain groups repeatedly, in spite of powerful evidence to the contrary, vote against their own economic self interest.
We’ve seen and continue to see examples of the ways in which Big Data and the vast amount of individual information available today, make it easier to define the electors.
Back in 1964, journalist Eugene Burdick first took up this issue in a seminal novel entitled The 480. A story where computers could slice and dice the electorate to give one candidate an electoral advantage. Today, that’s no longer fiction
Tony Fairfax. a demographic consultant and CEO of CensusChannel LLC, has been looking at these trends for decades and he’s come to some interesting new conclusions in The Presidential Trend.
My conversation with Tony Fairfax: