Catalist
Catalist is a for-profit corporation based in Washington, D.C., that operates a voter database.History
Catalist was founded in 2006 by Harold M. Ickes and Laura Quinn with seed money from George Soros. It specializes in microtargeting for Democratic political campaigns. The company was founded as Data Warehouse, LLC.
Catalist's first CEO was Laura Quinn, a former economic policy advisor in the U.S. Senate and Deputy Chief of Staff for Vice President Al Gore.
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. A collaboration between Catalist and SurveyMonkey showed that Sanders supporters voted less frequently and were less reliably Democratic than Clinton supporters.
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, the Democratic National Committee, and the 2008 Barack Obama presidential campaign.
Catalist has engaged in data mining on behalf of clients such as Rock the Vote and EMILY's List. Catalist receives funding from the Democracy Alliance.
In 2015, Catalist received $725,000 from the National Education Association, a major teachers union.
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.
