At the end of the last presidential election, Politico ran a compelling article about the lack of technology and analytics that were applied by the losing party and its operatives. The article points to the clear need to close the innovation gap between the losing party and the winning one. However, I’d argue that there is an innovation gap that spans the entire political process and isn’t solely on the shoulders of either party.
In politics, there is a never-ending search for clean, direct and complete voter data by which one can target a voter and drive them to the polls. Getting this data usually involves some form of dirty tactics. The game ultimately comes down to candidates trying to outspend each other in hopes of reaching more voters than the other guy… or gal.
Winning can be done without getting dirty. By applying powerful technologies, staffers can go after valuable voters without resorting to smear campaigns. As Politico put it, the current state of affairs for data-driven voter intelligence largely “consists of people pushing and pulling CSV files to the party’s FTP servers, often at the end of election cycles, when the data’s value diminishes markedly. This is not a viable solution moving forward.”
“Not a viable solution.” That’s an understatement.
In my early twenties I worked as Social Media Director for a political consulting firm in Austin, TX. It was up to me to figure out the issues that really mattered to constituents and to point campaigns towards the influencers who communicated issues for their voter base. Leading up to each campaign season, the office was limited to traditional methods for gathering constituent information. But truth be told, the traditional tactics of campaign research – long hours spent polling, knocking on doors and nailing down influencer IDs – only served to drain budgets, beleaguer staffers and ultimately left a lot to guesswork.
Instead, campaigns should invest in data that goes beyond a zip code. Using data to activate voters helps staffers understand the complexities of their audience.
Brass tacks: using data science to combine information from voter files with social data, candidates can have a competitive edge that tilts the scale and lets democracy do the rest.
Check out a demo of the platform to see data science in action.
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