Catalist is a for-profit corporation based in Washington, D.C., that operates a

voter database A voter database is a database containing information on voters for the purpose of assisting a political party or an individual politician, in their Get out the vote (GOTV) efforts and other areas of the campaign. In most countries, the election ...

and works for progressive causes.

History

Catalist was founded as Data Warehouse, LLC. The founding team of Catalist included Harold M. Ickes, Laura Quinn, and Vijay Ravindran. During the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign, Catalist served as the principal repository of Democratic data, working with over 90 liberal groups including the

Service Employees International Union Service Employees International Union (SEIU) is a labor union representing 2 million workers in over 100 occupations in the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico. SEIU is focused on organizing workers in three sectors: healthcare (over half of m ...

, the

Democratic National Committee The Democratic National Committee (DNC) is the principal executive leadership board of the United States's Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party. According to the party charter, it has "general responsibility for the affairs of the ...

, and the 2008 Barack Obama presidential campaign. Catalist has engaged in

data mining Data mining is the process of extracting and finding patterns in massive data sets involving methods at the intersection of machine learning, statistics, and database systems. Data mining is an interdisciplinary subfield of computer science and ...

on behalf of clients such as

Rock the Vote Rock the Vote is a Nonprofit organization, non-profit organization in the United States. Through registering new young voters, the group aims to "channel the energy among young people around racial, economic, and health justice into one of the mo ...

and

EMILY's List EMILYs List is a left-leaning American political action committee (PAC) that aims to help elect Democratic female candidates in favor of abortion rights to office. It was founded by Ellen Malcolm in 1985. The group's name is an acronym for "E ...

. Catalist receives funding from the

Democracy Alliance The Democracy Alliance is a network of progressive megadonors who coordinate their political donations to groups that the Alliance has endorsed. Since its founding in 2005, the Democracy Alliance has given more than $1 billion to liberal organiz ...

. In 2015, Catalist received $725,000 from the

National Education Association The National Education Association (NEA) is the largest labor union in the United States. It represents public school teachers and other support personnel, faculty and staffers at colleges and universities, retired educators, and college st ...

, a major teachers union. In August 2016, Catalist analyzed records from 10 battleground states through June and found a major influx of new voters, majority-white, were responsible for the record-breaking turnout in the Republican primaries. The company as of 2018 claims that it has data on 240 million unique individuals in the United States, to be used by "progressive" organizations. Laura Quinn remained chief executive officer. After the 2020 election, Catalist published an analysis of turnout and votes among various demographic groups that contributed to the Biden / Harris ticket's victory. In June 2021, 30 workers for Catalist announced that a super majority of workers had signed union authorization cards to be represented by the

Communication Workers of America The Communications Workers of America (CWA) is the largest communications and media trade union, labor union in the United States, representing about 700,000 members in both the private and public sectors (also in Canada and Puerto Rico). The unio ...

through

CODE-CWA The Campaign to Organize Digital Employees or CODE-CWA is a project launched by the Communications Workers of America to unionize tech and video game workers in January 2020. It sprung out of conversations with Game Workers Unite (GWU) and emp ...

, and that Catalist had voluntarily recognized the workers' union. They did not unionize to improve working conditions, but because workers felt that since the company does work for the labor movement, its employees should be unionized.

References

2006 establishments in Washington, D.C. Companies based in Washington, D.C. Political campaign techniques Political campaign technology Progressive organizations in the United States Technology companies established in 2006 2008 United States presidential election {{US-poli-stub

History

See also

References