I’ll tell you my ranking if you tell me yours. Crowdpac, a Palo Alto-based group that monitors politicians and political candidates, claims there are tea leaves to be read in people’s first names. If its research is deemed accurate by the powers that be, it could revolutionize the way political parties go after prospective donors and voters.
According to its website:
Crowdpac’s mission is to give politics back to people — to make it easier for citizens to learn about politicians, and to find and support political candidates that match their priorities and beliefs. We want to help end the stranglehold of big money donors and special interests on the political system and to help create a more representative democracy. Crowdpac is independent, non-partisan and for-profit.
The organization bases its data model on sources of publicly available information. For candidates it uses three criteria: money, words or phrases the person has used most (gleaned from speeches and legislative text), and voting record. For voters, it draws upon campaign contributions made since 1980 by people with a given first name.
Using these data points, Crowdpac (which at first blush looks like Cowpatty) assigns a score along this continuum:
Someone who is a true centrist will end up with a score of 0. To see the paradigm in action, Crowdpac gives scores to 1,287 candidates. Of those listed, Republican Joni Ernst, who won the race for U.S. Senator from Iowa, gets a score of 7.3C, while her Democratic challenger, Bruce Braley, receives a 6.0L.
A page at the site allows you to type in your own name to see how it has fared politically. Howard, it turns out, ends up solidly in the purple, with a score of 2.5C:
People with this name, the site further reveals, are more likely to contribute to a campaign than the average citizen.
Sadly, the site was unable to come up with any matches for the name Barack, which is probably off the charts anyway.
(h/t Mike Opelka, The Blaze)
