There are several tools, vendors, consultants and general resources out there for anyone who wants to get into data and analytics. Here's a constantly growing, incomplete list of things that we think you may find useful.  Our  blogroll on the side also provides a list of neat statistics software and pollsters out there.

Statistical and Quantitative Software

R -  R is an open sourced statistical analysis programming language.  Although most of us on the site  use SPSS professionally (see below), our real interests are starting to shift to R.  This is partially because the development ethos and community behind R are more in line with our values, but mostly  because it's highly extensible, consumes light resources and is quickly growing to be the preferred language of academics and next generation leaders.  R is, so to speak, "the new hotness".   The syntax resembles C, but be warned that this is a tool best left for experienced programmers.

SPSS - SPSS (Statistics Primarily For Social Sciences) is one of the industry standards. Pretty much, everyone has used it at some point.  SPSS is expensive, but it has lots of functionality built into it and is also very, very extensible. SPSS runs on your local machine, which can  be useful when you don't have a connection to a server, but this can cause problems when you're trying to work with massive datasets and find your computer crashing over and over again. A plus side is that the SPSS scripting language looks a lot like both English and your basic c-derived programming language.

STATA - STATA is a primary competitor to SPSS. It's also expensive, but has a lot of functionality and a very, very parsimonious scripting language. STATA also runs on your local machine, but is somehow better at memory allocation, so it can handle larger datasets before it crashes.

SAS - SAS is a server side statistical software suite. What this means is that all the computation and number crunching occurs not on your local machine, but on a server to which you're connected.  This allows SAS to surpass RAM limitations, but at the same time, if you're not able to have a direct connection, you can only write the scripts that you'll need. You'll have to wait till you can connect to run them.

Open Office Calc - There's a lot that you can do with a spreadsheet program. Believe me, there's a lot you can do. Not everyone can, or needs to, spend thousands of dollars for a statistics software suite.   In the spirit of open source software, we support free alternatives to proprietary, closed source software.  Open Office's Calc is a great alternative to using Microsoft Excel.

Open Office Base - Having access to graphical user interface tool to do database work can be one of the most relieving things there is to a campaign. Not everyone has the time to learn SQL, and using Base is a great alternative.

Free Statistical Software - No list is ever complete, and we don't intend ours to be taken as complete.  This is a periodically updated list  of free statistical software suites that you can use. We haven't experimented with many of them, but you should feel free to let us know what you think of them.

Other Useful Tools

Gliffy - If you need to build and share massive charts with collaborators, e.g., building a diagram of a database, this is a great tool to use. Its basic features are free and licensed for limited use.

Chart Chooser - This is a neat resource that helps you optimize your presentation of data. Once you pick what kind of goal you're trying to accomplish with the presentation, you can download different templates for both Excel and Powerpoint. Neat stuff!

GGobi -  If you're looking for more adventurous ways of presenting your data, GGobi is your best bet. You can get some pretty interesting and advanced visualizations out of this.  Also, there's a plug-in for R. 

Political Data

InfoUSA - If you ever need any kind of commercial data for any of your projects, you're most likely going to get it from InfoUSA. It is almost frightening how much consumer data they have, but if you're looking to poll targeted groups, like, say, people who frequent motels six or more times a year, you're going to get that sample from InfoUSA. Very interesting stuff.

Yankelovich Research - Yankelovich is another consumer data vendor. They mostly do commerical work, but some political people use them, too.

VoteBuilder - VoteBuilder is a collaboration between the DNC and The Voter Activation Network.  Basically, VoteBuilder is a great web interface that holds and delivers data from the DNC's national voter file to authorized users.  This file is a collaboration between the national party and the various state parties.  The only people who are authorised to use these data are Democratic campaigns, parties and the people whom they license.

Catalist - This is kind of a neat story. Catalist is the new name for a company once known as Data Warehouse. What was Data Warehouse?  It was a company that began when a whole bunch of people got fired from the DNC.  How so? Well, during his tenure as DNC Chairman, Terry McAulliffe began to put together the first  Democratic  Party national voter file. It turned out to be too little, too late. When Dean took over, he decided to start from scratch, and got rid of the entire team.  These people decided to take their experience and go to work as a for-profit company who would provide data services to people who really couldn't coordinate with the Democratic National Committe, like unions and left leaning non-governmental organizations.  Today, Catalist is the biggest data vendor in the country. They learned their lessons from being fired for incompetence and turned around into the biggest Democratic data vendor in the span of four years.

Political Data, Inc - If you ever need to do work in California, you will buy data from Jim Hayes.  There is no one in California who has a more up to date list than he does. He gives you accurate voter history, accurate ethnic matching, accurate phone numbers...One could go on and on about Jim Hayes.

Labels and Lists - Labels and Lists is one of the oldest vendors out there.  They don't do much in the way of anything fancy like microtargeting or consumer data work, but what they do is provide solid basic data at a reasonable price.

Voter Vault - Voter Vault is to the RNC what VoteBuilder is to the DNC. It's become somewhat legendary for the depth, breadth and accuracy of what it contains.

Books

Political Targeting - Whether you're a Democrat or a Republican, you can learn quite a bit from Hal Malchow's book.  Hal Malchow is the founding partner of MSHC Direct, one of the biggest and most innovative Democratic direct mail firms.  Hal has pioneered the use of voter file data, commercial data and subsequently derived data in modern politics.  Buy this book, read it and work through the exercises.  You won't be disappointed in what you learn.