Pics?

And let us know how it goes.

Guy. Why?

Okay. Have you ever ejaculated?

I'm working on a little game and I have character objects that have a shit ton of variables in them and I need to access these but it seems like a waste to write a bunch of accessor functions like this:

Code: [Select]

character.prototype.getName = function(){
     return this.name
}

character.prototype.getAge = function(){
     return this.Age
}

ect

Is there a better way of going about this?

If there isn't, there should be. I'll think on it some.

There's likely a library or toolset that takes care of that already out there, I'm sure.

Quote from: crazzyass on November 18, 2014, 07:16:59 pm

In a generic election I would agree with you, but the Obama camp did such a good job framing the auto bailout in places like Ohio, Wisconsin, and Michigan that I feel like he had more of an inherent advantage there than in Pennsylvania. And the kind of affinity the bailout created - the kind where you are sort of indebted to the president for your continued livelihood - makes the voters' persuadability extremely low, meaning Romney would be less of a threat there unless he really pumped the money in. Pennsylvania was a bit more open to persuasion in 2012.

I guess 2012 could be the exception but I just think that Pennsylvania is fools gold for Republicans for the time being. They always float it as a place where they could "expand the map" but always lose by big margins.

Not to nitpick, but even with the factors you mentioned Ohio was still much closer then Pennsylvania was it not? I just don't see how even with said factors Pennsylvania is a "better bet" for Romney than Ohio/Wisconsin. Don't get get me wrong there was a bit of a panic on the Democratic side about Pennsylvania in October because Romney hadn't been defined there yet, but it turned out to be hot air. IIRC Ohio was the second closest state in the Union next to Florida on election night, so isn't it still more plausible that Romney wins Ohio (still losing the election, mind you) then Pennsylvania in some huge upset?

I definitely see why Ohio seemed like more of a swing state due to the closer margin on election day, but that number doesn't always signify how safe or unsafe a given state is. There are three factors that determine the election - voter persuadability, affinity, and likelihood to vote. Most of what I or others do involves quantifying these qualities and devising strategies to move them in a favorable direction.

Persuadability - how easy/hard is it to convince a voter to change their vote
Affinity/Support - which way the voter is leaning already. Usually measured on a 1 - 5 scale, with 1 being Strong Support and 5 being Strong Opposition. Some campaigns use 10 point scales or more complicated algorithms for this. Local campaigns can get away with a 5 point scale.
Likelihood - how often does this person turn out to vote? This is determined by looking at their voting record. Voting in 3 out of 3 past elections would make you highly likely, 2 out of 3 likely, and 1 out of 3 sporadic. It gets more complicated when factoring in mid-terms and the like, but that's irrelevant for now.

Anyway, I'm saying all of that to make this point: a state is more favorable with a) 52-47 support split and b) extremely low persuadability than it is with a) 60-40 support split and b) extremely high persuadability.

After those two are pushed as far as possible, your GOTV operation ensures that any issues with your supporters' likelihood to vote are irrelevant. Door knocks and phone calls aid with pushing their likelihood way up.

In 2012, Ohio had a) pretty narrow supporter split in favor of Obama, b) low persuadability, and c) a way better field/GOTV operation that Pennsylvania since it is "the" swing state and Obama had invested heavily there years in advance.

By that analysis, PA was more up for grabs than OH by quite a bit.

Put more simply: it would cost far less money to persuade 10% of Pennsylvanians than it would 2% of Ohioans.

Edit follow-up: it was about a 150,000 vote margin, I think, and those 150,000 votes were extremely secure; moreso than the margin of voters in PA, if that makes sense. Looking just at how small the margin is can be deceptive; think Karl Rove insisting that the Romney campaign had plenty of room to win Ohio when all the other analysts were just like "...yeah no." The likelihood of the votes and the partisanship of the voters was much higher than the folks Romney was counting on to cancel them out at the district/precinct level.

Quote from: crazzyass on November 17, 2014, 02:54:28 am

Romney's bread and butter was older whiter voters, the kind that already have extremely high turnout. The younger voters that high-tech tools help turnout are predominantly Democratic. Romney wouldn't benefit much from this infrastructure. What doomed him was the fact that he went hard-right during the GOP primary, and the Obama campaign had no primary fight, so they spent all that time framing the GOP opponents as lunatics. By the time Romney attempted to pivot back towards the middle, most of Obama's key electorate already made their minds up about him, so it was all turnout from there. A simple fact is that Republicans are truly a minority in this country. If everyone voted, the GOP would lose elections 65-35 consistently. Romney at no point had a real chance to win the presidency. The electorate was stacked against him from the very beginning.

And to think the Romney campaign skewed their internals to account for 2004 voter demographics because they thought the 2008 map was a fluke. They seriously believed going into election night that they weren't only going to win, but win big. Something like this:

Red for DEMS, blue for GOP (I know, I know):



Romney.Ryan: 315 Electoral Votes

Obama/Biden: 223 Electoral Voted

They were expecting a 1988 and got a reverse 2004 instead. Must have sucked. They were so confident in their operation they (famously) didn't draft a concession speech in advance. Even the Obama people were surprised in the effectiveness of their turnout operation when the results actually came in.

Ohhh yeah, they fucked it up big time with their modeling/polling. That was their biggest failure probably, not the tech side.

Even if they tired to account for it, I don't think they would have taken Ohio. Pennsylvania and Florida were better bets and, even then, not quite enough to make it happen.

Nice to see you, crazy.

Do the people, including the candidate, involved in campaigns believe in what they are doing? Or is it merely a job and the only real goal is winning the race?

Like with anything, it really depends. There are a few trends, though.

The professional political consultant class that is housed in Washington, DC tends to be pretty far removed from their work, emotionally. At least overtly so. Some are passionate and compartmentalize this in order to be effective, others are psychopathic sharks. They tend to consult mostly on congressional races and they do so for races across the country. Party affiliation seems to have little effect on this, though interestingly enough the GOP operatives I've met always seem more competent than the Democratic ones. This coming from a Democrat.

Other consultants are more geographic based, and these tend to be more genuine/believe in what they are doing. So a guy that has done every race in a given state or city for the past 20 years probably really cares about the area, or at the very least enjoys dominating it specifically. Someone with that level of experience that chooses to not go to DC probably is particularly affectionate for their home. I trust these guys a lot more than DC operatives; on the other hand, they are sometimes less skilled than DC operatives.

If in doubt, hire a DC consultant and a local consultant. The extra oversight doesn't hurt with this, either.

What are the biggest technical problems faced in during a campaign? Obama's campaign got a lot of coverage for being so web2.0/data-mining savvy whereas his opponent was doing it the old way and the opponent got his ass handed to him. Is information bandwidth (both among the campaign staff and the supporters/voters) a big thing?

Every campaign since the dawn of campaigns is really trying to accomplish only one thing: ensure that 50% + 1 of the people voting in the election will be voting for its candidate. Everything comes back to that.

So in Obama's case specifically, and Democrats a bit more broadly, the typical electorate make-up is not super favorable: older, white males voting don't give us a great shot at winning. So they had to change the electoral make-up: young, minority, and unmarried female voters were determined to be the best bet. From here, the campaign created means to convince these voters to not only want to vote for Obama, but to actually vote for Obama.

For younger voters, this mean web 2.0 and mobile apps. People keep shitting on Romney for not being on the same level with these tools and, while he could have done some things better, that wasn't his main problem.

Romney's bread and butter was older whiter voters, the kind that already have extremely high turnout. The younger voters that high-tech tools help turnout are predominantly Democratic. Romney wouldn't benefit much from this infrastructure. What doomed him was the fact that he went hard-right during the GOP primary, and the Obama campaign had no primary fight, so they spent all that time framing the GOP opponents as lunatics. By the time Romney attempted to pivot back towards the middle, most of Obama's key electorate already made their minds up about him, so it was all turnout from there. A simple fact is that Republicans are truly a minority in this country. If everyone voted, the GOP would lose elections 65-35 consistently. Romney at no point had a real chance to win the presidency. The electorate was stacked against him from the very beginning.

Though it is important to note that immortality from old age would make the likelihood of you dying in a horrific accident jump to 100%.