Analyst Institute

Template:TOCnestleft The Analyst Institute claims it "is a clearinghouse for evidence-based best practices in progressive voter contact. The Analyst Institute assists organizations in building testing into their voter contact efforts, especially with regard to high priority topics."

Beginnings

Sasha Issenberg in the New York Times gave this description:

• The Analyst Institute is "a firm quietly founded in 2007 by AFL-CIO officials and liberal allies, which seeks to establish a set of empirically proven "best practices” for interacting with voters."

• "Nearly all of the Analyst Institute’s research is private, shared only among the participating groups. The institute’s Web site is almost comically empty, and the group’s name — two abstract nouns, cryptically conjoined — evokes a CIA front."

Incorporation

The Business Filings Search at the District of Columbia Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs says the date of organization for Analyst Institute LLC was Jan. 25, 2008.

The address given for the Analyst Institute LLC is 815 16th Street NW, 7th Floor, Washington, DC 20006, which is the address of the AFL-CIO.

The Analyst Institute has filed a report with DC government in 2009, 2011, 2013, and 2015, but those reports are not online.

The agent for the business filing was Laurence E Gold, who "works with labor unions, advocacy and charitable organizations, political organizations and activists, political services providers and others so they can succeed in the political, legislative and policy arenas."

Internet

• Web site: https://analystinstitute.org/
• Twitter: @AnalystInst. Protected Tweets.

Priorities

2008

• "Partnered with dozens of organizations to execute 44 large‐scale field experiments. Topics included which voters are "persuadable", how behavioral science insights can be translated into voter contact tactics, and how to prevent ballot rolloff. The Analyst Institute was also frequently consulted to provide assistance in experimental design and execution of testing."
• "support a community of 400 data analysts and related professionals in collaborating and sharing their findings through monthly Analyst Group meetings and retreats."

2009-2010

• How Best to Reduce Ballot Rolloff and Increase Ballot Completion?
• What are the Predictors of Persuadability?
• Increase the Use of Impact-Based Communications.
• Which Advocacy Tactics are Most Effective?
• How Can we best Use Social Networking Technology?
• How Can we Effectively Engage Surge Voters?
• Can we Experimentally, and Quickly, Test the Impact of Television Ads?
• More Trainings, External Communications, and Outreach.
• Continue to Develop Written Communications.
• Enhance Skills of the Progressive Data Community.

2010-2015

• National Progressive and Party Infrastructure, Dec. 2009. Building Integrated, Intelligent Progressive Capacity, 2010-2015, including:
  • Analyst Institute,
  • Catalist,
  • America Votes,
  • Atlas,
  • Democracy Alliance,
  • Common Purpose Project.

People

Current Analyst Institute people page.

• William Brannon, Director of Analytics
• Kevin Collins, Director of Research, @kwcollins. Listed as one of The Influencers 50 by Campaigns and Elections in Oct. 2014.
• Saul Cunow, Senior Research Manager
• Galen Deiz, Analyst
• Katherine Duch, Senior Research Manager
• Daniel Gonzales, Training and Outreach
• Tate Hausman, Director of Training and Outreach, @tatehausman. What an Honor: Leading the Analyst Institute.
• Josh Kalla, Analyst
• Lauren Keane, Director of Civic Engagement. Former Senior Analyst.
• Terence Leong, Analyst, tleong@analystinstitute.org
• Joel Middleton, Senior Analyst, jmiddleton@analystinstitute.org
• Kathryn Poindexter, Training and Outreach
• Josh Rosmarin, Deputy Director of Analytics
• Meg Schwenzfeier, Analyst
• Aaron Strauss, Executive Director, @aaron_strauss

Former Employees

• Pete Backof, Special Projects Analyst
• Josh Berezin, Former Senior Analyst and Director of Training and Outreach, now with Team Fulcrum.
• Jeffrey Ferguson, Former intern
• Andrew Gall, a New Organizing Institute Fellow, agall@analystinstitute.org
• Jennifer Green, former Executive Director now with Civis Analytics.
• Debby Kermer, Analyst
• Chris Piotrowski, Analyst
• Todd Rogers, Former Executive Director, trogers@analystinstitute.org. Associate Professor of Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School.
• Meredith Sadin, Senior Analyst
• Regina Schwartz, Former Deputy Director, rschwartz@analystinstitute.org, @ginaschwartz.
• John Ternovski, Former Director of Analytics
• Emily Thorson, Senior Analyst
• Chris Warshaw, Senior Analyst

Board of Directors

• Mike Podhorzer, Chair, AFL-CIO
• Hal Malchow, MSHC
• Laura Quinn, Catalist. Former Deputy Chief of Staff for Vice President Gore, as Director of the Democratic Technology and Communications Committee for the Democratic Majority Leader in the U.S. Senate.
• Jeff Malachowsky
• Todd Rogers, Harvard Kennedy School
• Mark Steitz, TSD Communications. Co-founded Copernicus Analyst (now part of Catalist). Senior Advisor to Catalist.

Former Board Members

• Jeff Robinson, ACORN; Citizens Services, Inc.

Senior Advisors (2009-2012)

• Chris Mann
• Judith Freeman, @judithfreeman
• David Nickerson

Affiliations are included for Board members for identification purposes only.

Known funding

• Atlantic Philanthropies, $200,000 in 2010.
• The 2010 IRS 990 for the AFL-CIO (EIN 53-0228172) showed $11,725 in "non-cash assistance" for rental space.

Publications

• 2011 Expanded GOTV Checklist, including
  • Talk voters through a voting plan
  • Emphasize high expected turnout in a given election (not low expected turnout)
  • Remind voters of their previous commitments to vote
  • Find ways to remind targets that voting records are public
  • Hold targets accountable
• [http://www.funderscommittee.org/files/analyst_institute_review_of_voter_registration_research.pdf Voter Registration

Literature Review]. 2011?

• GOTV Best Practices, 2012 Edition.
• Power calculator Shiny app.

Presentations

• GOTV Best Practices: Experiments Make Us More Effective, presentation by Regina Schwartz to Democracy for Alliance Night School.
• Netroots Nation participation, Regina Schwartz, 2011-2013.
  • Video: Regina Schwartz of Analyst Institute at Netroots Nation 2011
  • Randomized Controlled Experiment Results to Win Your Campaign, 2012
  • Beyond the A/B test: Using Social Science Theory to Get More from Your List
  • Political Consultants Don’t Want Donors to Know: How to Win Elections with Data-driven Field Operations (video)
  • What the F*** Do We Know? Applying Scientific Research to Elections
• Netroots Nation 2014: Field-tested best practices for GOTV in 2014, Josh Berezin. 2014.

Articles about Analyst Institute

• Nudge the Vote, New York Times, Oct. 2010.
• Can Science Plant Brain Seeds That Make You Vote?, NPR, July 2012.
• Academic ‘Dream Team’ Helped Obama’s Effort. New York Times, Nov. 2012.
• Liberal Stealth Groups Paved Obama Win, Newsmax, Nov. 2012.
• Webinar Recap: Get Your Voters to Commit to Vote. 2013.
• Obama's Not-So-Big-Data. Pacific Standard, Jan. 2014.

Related

• Experiments in Online Advocacy, Nirmal Mankani and Ethan Roeder, New Organizing Institute.
• David W Nickerson and Todd Rogers. Do You Have a Voting Plan? Implementation Intentions, Voter Turnout, and Organic Plan Making, Association for Psychological Science, 21(2) 194-199, 2010.

References

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