ArchPundit

One of the things that gets a lot of attention in political circles is how to target specific people to vote in an election. Much of the traditional ideas are based on rules of thumbs and such, but Foster developed his from scratch pretty much though some others are working on similar ideas.

The Democrat, Bill Foster of Geneva (left, campaign photo) , is a get-out-the-vote geek. He’s a knock-on-doors nerd who wrote the software program credited with propelling Democratic challenger Patrick Murphy to a narrow victory in 2006 over incumbent Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick in a suburban Philadelphia district.

Foster said he looked at races all over the country before deciding to move to Pennsylvania for two months to volunteer for Murphy.

“It was pretty remarkable,” said Nat Binns, a spokesman for Murphy’s campaign. “He dropped in from nowhere and approached the get-out-the-vote effort as a scientific puzzle.

“He helped us crack the code and figure out where we needed to go and how to do it really efficiently,” Binns said. “It was brilliant. We were able to knock on 140,000 doors on Election Day, which was a big part of why we won (by just 1,518 votes).”  (Here is a .pdf that describes his effort for Murphy)

Foster’s unofficial title was “campaign physicist.”

We like to think that elections are all about ideas and the will of the majority.

In fact, they’re all about getting the people who support your ideas to go to the polls in greater numbers than those who support your opponent’s ideas, no matter which ideas the actual majority of people support.

And the greater the number of registered voters inclined to sit out an election-as they likely will be March 8, which is a Saturday-the more important that effort becomes.