This fall, The Economist kept big data and elections to top of mind with an article that pointed to the effect that predictive analysis has on campaign efforts. The Washington Post comedically paints a picture of politicos across the country “staring at tea leaves” as they try to predict the outcome of the election. Fast forward to this week and US News & World Report sums up the effective application of data in the 2014 midterm elections in a single quote:
“We can target by state, by party affiliation, by likelihood to vote and by persuadability”
Keith Kazerman, SVP of Sales at DirectTV
Election Day is here and as candidates wrap up stump speeches and campaign staffers pound the pavement, there overarching goal remains the same–get voters to the polls.
A non-presidential voting year means low voter turnout across the board. The goal for campaigns is clear–get people to vote. How do you turn out a voter? Knock on doors. Send a mailer. Target them by party affiliation and persuadability and hit “go” on an ad. Sure–all of those work, to some effect.
But with a little data, campaigners can connect with voters more effectively and on a larger scale. Here are three ways that Audience Insights can make a waves in an election:
Issues Targeting
Rather than approaching a target group of voters based on party affiliation, using data science and natural language processing, voters can be targeted based on their issues. By ingesting the social conversations of key online audiences, People Pattern can identify interests that are shared among individuals, and collect those individuals into an actionable list of available target voters.
Location Precision
In Politico-speak, location means two things–geography and network. Before firing off that next round of Twitter ads or Facebook posts, campaigners should identify the geographic location of key voters to ensure delivery of timely, relevant, content to the areas where those voters live. Secondly, campaigners should target voters in the right place–are they on Facebook or Instagram? Mobile or Desktop? Android or iPhone? A key component of effectively reaching an audience is knowing precisely where to reach them.
Influencer Outreach
Understanding the big picture when it comes to online influence allows marketers the opportunity to make the right move at the right time. People Pattern’s approach to influencer identification ensures that the target influencers are the people who are really influencing an online conversation across an audience or within a niche group. Avoid sending the same messaging regurgitated to the same social folks within a small networks–find the people who are making waves in the audiences that you want to reach.
People Pattern uses rule-based data science to analyze digital micro-trends within hyper-local to transliterate big data into digestible data that allows brands to deeply understand the interests that drive audience behavior.
Imagine a world in which a campaign could ingest and analyze all their house list voters in order to segment them by self-reported interests, and then advertise directly to the most influential folks out there? To quote the Economist, this is the kind of data prediction that “could send a shiver down the back of legislators.”
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