The Future of Winning: How Data Science Is Reshaping Politics and Advocacy

Analytics is a driving force in politics and advocacy today. Whether it’s developing content and ads across media, fundraising for causes or campaigns, getting people to register and vote, or helping to define and defend a political strategy-if it’s not data-driven, it’s dead on arrival.
This discussion between bipartisan trailblazers looks at the use of data in politics and advocacy to learn about how analytics will determine tomorrow’s victories-and defeats.
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Analytics and data-driven decision-making are playing an ever-larger role in today’s political and advocacy careers, ranging from polling and public opinion research, audience targeting, advertising, fundraising, to campaign management and execution. Yet very few academic programs prepare individuals to excel at these tasks. To meet that need, the Columbia University School of Professional Studies and the Columbia University Department of Political Science have developed the Master of Science in Political Analytics program to train a new generation for long-term, successful careers in politics who are uniquely equipped in the substance of politics and quantitative methods to understand the data that drives decision-making, to communicate effectively about data and politics, and to communicate effectively with other professionals and laypeople about political behavior and dynamics. The program provides quantitative skills in an explicitly political context, facilitating crosswalk with nontechnical professionals and decision-makers-and empowers students to become decision-makers themselves.
Students undertake a rigorous suite of tailored political science, applied quantitative analytics, and new approaches to data analytics including machine learning and AI. Taken together, these courses help develop the skills they need to model and analyze the activities, the actions, and behavior that are fundamental to politics, which in turn prepares them to develop insights and strategies to understand, explain, and influence political action. The program is designed to fill an important role in the rapidly developing field of data analytics as it is applied to politics and policy advocacy. Furthermore, it will provide a clearer professional trajectory, by helping students acquire necessary skills to advance their careers and open up new opportunities in different industries.
sps.columbia.edu/academics/ma...
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