It's all about the stats: What politics and baseball have in common
Baseball managers and political strategists alike rely on detailed metrics to secure victory
In his final column as host of The House, Chris Hall talks with three political strategists to examine the intersection between two of his favourite subjects: politics and baseball.
There's a saying that life imitates art. But for my money, there's another comparison that's equally true. Politics imitates baseball.
Here's the pitch.
Politics and baseball are filled with tradition. There are a lot of rules; some are written, and some really just time-honoured traditions.
Today, both are becoming more reliant on modern-day metrics — data and statistics — to attract new supporters, and to win.
In baseball, those stats help managers decide when to deploy the infield shift, or put an extra person in the outfield to prevent the best hitters from getting on base.
In politics, the numbers tell campaign managers which ridings to visit and which campaign promise to promote. They know how many swing votes are available in each voting district. Parties keep data banks that tell them which address is home to a supporter, and which is home to a voter who might be convinced to join their side.
So it's not surprising that many politicians and their strategists are also baseball fans.
There is a powerful connection between running the bases and running a campaign, according to Anne McGrath.
"I think that all campaigns are, or strive to be, data-driven now," said McGrath, the NDP's national director and a veteran of both federal and provincial campaigns.
"It is the key in politics. You have to find the people who support you and get them out to vote. So you have to know who they are and know where they are and know what they care about."
McGrath was a die-hard fan of the Montreal Expos. The club moved years ago to Washington and she's still not over it. But McGrath sees a lesson in the move, about the importance of not just maintaining a fan base, but finding ways to get new ones to the ballpark.
"You do have to know who your base is and you have to expand it. You have to bring more people in. And you have to do it in a way that is attentive to changing demographics and changing ways of communicating with people and getting people interested and involved and motivated," she explained.
Jason Lietaer grew up reading baseball box scores and waiting impatiently for the weekend newspaper that included the stats for every American League player, including members of the hometown Toronto Blue Jays.
Lietaer, a former Conservative campaign strategist who now runs the government-relations firm Enterprise Canada, is a believer in mining data for insights into a player or into a campaign. But just gathering that data doesn't guarantee victory in either baseball or politics, he said.
Sometimes the bottom of the ninth happens a month before the game even starts.- Jason Lietaer
The players on the field, or the candidates knocking on doors continue to play a key role in determining whether you win or lose. Plus, it's important to interpret that data correctly
"And I would say in politics, we're still sort of struggling with some of that," Lietaer said. "You know, is there only one or two ways to read the data? How important is digital communication? How important is this piece of information?"
A key lesson is figuring out what the statistics are telling you before the end of the game or before election night, to better adapt to the changing circumstances and give your team a better chance at victory.
"Sometimes you don't realize you're winning or losing an election [until] you've already won or lost it," he said.
"Sometimes the bottom of the ninth happens a month before the game even starts."
Zita Astravas is another political insider who spends a lot of time watching baseball. She's worked on both federal and Ontario Liberal campaigns and is now chief of staff to Emergency Preparedness Minister Bill Blair.
"I think one of the things that drew me to politics and baseball is statistics, and I think it's one of the things that you can find common ground in," she said.
"You do it every day on a political campaign: you look at different ridings and craft who your best candidates are, what your target ridings are, just as you do on different players."
It's all about finding a hidden meaning in the numbers, an edge to exploit on the field or in the hustings.
It's all in the hopes of answering the key question, McGrath says: "Did we hit it out of the park?"