Can a "moneyball" system work for campaign funding?

The Oakland A's figured out they could buy wins more efficiently by spending on undervalued players rather than big names. Now a political fundraising startup called Oath is trying to apply the same logic to campaign donations, telling Democratic donors to stop pouring money into high-profile Senate races and instead fund obscure state legislative candidates where each dollar might actually swing an election.

The problem: rage-donating into the abyss

Oath was founded by Brian Derrick, a former Democratic campaign manager, and Taylor Arrata, who worked in big data at Accenture. Derrick got frustrated watching Democratic donors throw money at the same few expensive races cycle after cycle. "We had so many friends at the time who were so angry about what was happening in our politics and wanting to make a difference where it was going to really matter," he told NPR. "And they ended up just rage donating into the abyss."

The core problem Oath addresses is what Derrick calls "the inefficient allocation of resources." Democrats have "overfunded a small set of races to the tune of hundreds of millions, sometimes over a billion dollars, at the expense of funding winnable races in other places or further down ballot."

How the impact score works