When you get invasive online political ads, when you receive snail mail that seems tailored for you, or when chipper canvassers pound on your door, you’re experiencing some of the most visible and recognizable aspects of data-driven campaigning.
However, this largely invisible activity is not solely the work of expert data professionals. It also involves many local volunteers.
Data Collection
Gone are the days when political campaigns relied solely on handshakes and yard signs. Today, data is the lifeblood of modern political campaigns, and it’s a key component in their strategies to win elections.
This is especially true in the United States, where both major U.S. parties collect and analyze large amounts of data on 200 million voting-age Americans. Using this data, both parties try to identify voters with the highest chance of supporting their candidate. This is done by combining different sources of data and creating complex models that predict the stances of voters on certain issues or candidates.
The data collection is so comprehensive that it has spawned new career paths, such as “data strategist,” “sentiment analysis specialist” and “political data scientist.” These positions are not just common but have also been linked to a rise in the popularity of partisanship and electoral success (Hays and Dalton, 2017).
These models help campaign officials understand what messages will appeal to certain voters and when. This allows them to create more tailored content and target specific groups of voters, ensuring that their message is heard. In turn, this increases the likelihood of them getting the support and votes they need to win. Behavioral polling is one of the key methods used to analyze voter preferences and tailor campaign strategies. By examining how voters behave and respond to different messages, campaigns can refine their targeting efforts and craft more effective outreach strategies.
Besides this, large data sets can help campaign leaders understand the overall mood of the country or region so they can tailor their messages accordingly. They can also help them monitor election trends in real time and respond quickly.
The use of data in political campaigning has raised concerns about democratic norms and prompted calls for regulation. However, our understanding of who is collecting what data and how it is used remains largely unclear. This article aims to unpack and map these diverse practices, providing conceptual clarity that can inform a possible regulatory response.
Data Analysis
Data analysis is a key aspect of modern political campaigning, enabling parties to identify a particular audience and tailor their communications to them. This has the potential to create a more effective and targeted approach, for example by emphasizing a particular issue that is relevant to voters such as healthcare waiting lists or the economy . It also allows parties to communicate with a wider audience by communicating with them about an area where they are viewed favorably – for example the National Health Service versus the economy.
In addition to using internal data analytics tools, parties often rely on external data sources like public electoral records. These data points include the name, age, party registration and address of each voter as well as whether they voted or not. These datasets are made available to political parties by the state to encourage them to promote democratic engagement. They are often freely accessible by activists and, as a result, the extent to which they use them to target voters is not always apparent.
It is important to understand who uses what data in elections and how this varies across different countries and contexts. This is vital for the development of understanding and any regulatory response. It also highlights that there are a range of practices that have the potential to be seen as problematic, but which may be justified in different institutional contexts and for various reasons – for example, it would be reasonable for a government body or charity to use data differently to a party because their institutional norms would lead them to act in a particular way.
Data Visualization
Data visualization transforms raw data into clear, understandable insights that can help political campaigns convey complex information to a wide audience. But effective use of this tool requires careful consideration. Over-crowding a graph or chart with too many pieces of data can obscure important trends, while choosing inappropriate chart types can confuse or misrepresent the information. A good strategy for data visualization is to focus on one message or story, and to choose charts that are easy for the public to read and interpret.
In recent years, data analytics has become the cornerstone of modern political campaigns. In the United States, both major parties now work with data firms to compile national voter files that include detailed profiles of each person with thousands of data points and models that predict their stances on specific issues and candidates. The data can help decide who to call, where to send mailers and how to best target online ads.
As data-driven campaigning evolves, it raises ethical questions about whether politicians are authentic or simply telling voters what they want to hear. Kate Dommett, co-author of a new book on the topic, highlights some of the risks associated with this practice and suggests ways it might be regulated in the future.
As this field of inquiry grows, it will require a new conceptual understanding of who is using what kinds of data in which ways to shape political messages and strategies. This will be vital in guiding any regulatory response. In the meantime, tools like Google Data Studio, Microsoft Power BI and QlikView can be used to create attractive visualizations for political campaigns that communicate key messages in an engaging way.
Data Integration
Ever wonder why your snail mail is overflowing with weirdly accurate political fliers, or your phone is buzzing with calls from unknown numbers that reference information about your voting history? The reason is that the modern electoral process is hyper-personal. It’s a result of advances in data-driven insights that allow political campaigns to craft bespoke messages for small groups of voters. These data-driven insights can identify a voter’s motivations and concerns, which allows political campaigners to tailor their messages accordingly.
Moreover, data-driven insights also allow campaigns to adjust their tactics in real time. A campaign can launch turnout initiatives in areas with lower-than-expected early voting or alter their strategy based on live data about voter enthusiasm. This kind of responsiveness is unthinkable in the pre-data age.
As the use of data in political campaigns expands, new questions arise about its impact on democracy and what forms a regulatory response might take. While the Cambridge Analytica scandal brought the debate about how political data is used to the forefront, it hasn’t changed the ways that campaigns and data firms use information to influence voters.
To get a comprehensive picture of a voter, data firms like L2 Political combine public information about voters with private data purchased from companies such as Experian and Acxiom. The resulting data files can contain information about property records, consumer purchasing trends and demographic data such as age and race.
While these types of data can be helpful in understanding the motivations of a particular group, it is important to recognize that this kind of data use doesn’t guarantee that voters are persuaded. This is because the data does not tell us what type of message or tone to communicate with a voter; it only gives us an indication of which types of messages are more likely to be effective.
Data Security
Despite the power of data, political campaigns must carefully balance the strategic advantages of analytics with an ethical obligation to respect individual privacy. Mismanaged personal data can have major repercussions, from legal penalties to broader societal distrust in the electoral process. Addressing these concerns requires ensuring transparency, implementing robust security measures, and upholding a culture of accountability and integrity.
Traditionally, political campaigns used traditional voter information records to determine their target audience, such as a voter’s home address, party affiliation, and voting history. More recently, the use of data analysis has enabled campaigns to create hyper-detailed voter profiles based on information pulled from online sources. The results of this invasive tracking are often used to deliver targeted advertisements, which has led to privacy concerns and unintended consequences like doxing.
Data analytics allows political campaigns to gauge public sentiment and adapt strategies in real time, transforming the way elections work and, by extension, American democracy. This level of insight is enabling campaigns to shift their focus from gut instinct to granular insights. In the future, with AI and predictive algorithms becoming more refined, it’s likely that campaigns will be able to anticipate public sentiment and create strategies that evolve even before voters’ opinions crystalize.
As these new tools continue to evolve, it’s critical that the public understand how they operate and what impact they may have on their lives. This will help inform the conversations about these new technologies and the potential impact they could have on democracy as a whole. To further support this effort, the Brookings Institution has created a new project aimed at understanding the impacts of these tools on American society.