In my opinion, this technology gap will exist as long as the Republican party embraces social conservatism to the point of scientific ignorance.<p>Consider Todd Akin’s comment: "If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to just shut that whole thing down." While "legitimate rape" ended up being the colloquial reference that got hammered, what was so utterly offensive was the second part of the sentence. Implying the female body had some sort of magical spermicide. It's not just insensitive, it's scientifically ignorant. There are a lot of reasons why almost 2/3 of college students and recent college grads voted for Obama, and one of them is because of this complete idiocy that Republicans spew.<p>At the "Family Values Summit" earlier this year, Rick Santorum said, "We're never going to be the party of smart people." If you’re not the smart party, what are you? The party that claims the HPV vaccine causes retardation? The party that considers evolution a myth? Sure, but then you won't be the party with constituents that embrace science and technology.<p>Sure, they can throw money at the problem. Even if they intellectually objected with the platform, lots of engineers would work for the Republican party if they paid enough. But successful political campaigns are all about connecting a widespread media message to the individual visceral feelings of voters. If your staff has no idea who that voter is because they aren't actually one of them, then you're not going to have the same quality of campaign.<p>I don't think all is lost for the Republican party. For an example off the top of my head, it would be very easy to philosophically adjust their stances on "economic freedom" to support reforms to copyright and patent law. But until then, Rick Santorum is right. They won't be the party of smart people. Which means they won't be the party that has smart technology talent helping them run campaigns.
It is less the individuals they used and more the methods - the GOP leveraged old-boy contracts to IBM-style, tie-wearing consultant shops, and the Dems went for cloud infrastructure and open source.<p>It really highlights the old-world vs. new you see between the two parties.
>>> Among employees who work for Google, Mr. Obama raised about $720,000 in itemized contributions this year, against only $25,000 for Mr. Romney. That means that Mr. Obama took almost 97 percent of the money between the two major candidates.<p>I'm not sure that's indicative of anything, Ron Paul's visit to Google, from what I recall, was a standing room event. I personally just abhor donating money to political causes. It results in negative ads, trivialization of deep issues, omission of important discussion topics, and doesn't benefit Internet industry much - most political spending goes towards TV ads.
Is this really that big a problem though? I mean irrespective of how many people in SV disagree with the candidate, eventually if he/she throws enough money at the problem, he should be able to sort it out? After all, Porn is the canonical example for something that not a lot of engineering people would work on but still manages to attract enough talent to work on some really hard problems.
I lean Democrat but the GOP just took the wrong strategy this time around... they'll learn. If they can't find any good technologists that support their cause, pulling out a checkbook will reverse people's party alliances in an instant.<p>Believe me they'll unfortunately adapt.<p>From my perspective they have many more issues they need to sort out before this one to get themselves back together.
This article makes a lot of assumptions but it is hard to deny that silicon valley is a magnet for people who love technology.<p>It can be difficult to get a gauge on just how well the two parties are leveraging technology. My guess is they are both data mining their voter databases as well as doing some advanced machine learning. If that is the case I would guess recruiting people would be much easier out in the Bay Area.
What percentage of "job creators" does this cover?<p>The Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that computer and mathematical jobs are 2.7% of ALL jobs and 5.5% of jobs in SF.[1] I can't find the percentage of NEW jobs that are tech-related.<p>[1] <a href="http://www.bls.gov/ro9/oessanf.htm" rel="nofollow">http://www.bls.gov/ro9/oessanf.htm</a>
To everyone saying all Republicans need to do is throw money at it: Missionaries beat Mercenaries every time.<p>And the point of the article is that Democrats have ~5 times more potential to find missionaries than Republicans do.<p>Anyone who has tried to hire will realize that it is difficult, and a pool of 5x gives you a huge advantage.
If it were just about SW talent, I'd suspect that the G.O.P. could find plenty of willing and capable engineers in the finance sector to lead the way (assuming that the IT teams in the finance sector are aligned with the G.O.P. along with the more outward facing facets of the industry).