Why data-driven campaigning matters in the 2014 US elections and beyond

… Profiling voters isn’t novel, nor is the use of demographic data. What’s new is the explosion of data collection around other activities that can inform those profiles and models of behaviors: what you buy, what you watch, what you “like,” what you share, or which people or brands you interact with online. In aggregate, that data can be used to predict any number of things, from which political party you’re likely to be in to how you stand on a given issue to how likely you are to be persuaded to shift your vote. That last element can add up to a “persuadability score,” and measuring it accurately and acting on it is something an increasing number of campaigns that want to win are paying attention to today. …

Last year, I was offered an unusual opportunity by my former colleague, Alistair Croll, to interview the Obama campaign’s chief data scientist, Rayid Ghani, at the Strata Conference. Ghan, now the chief data scientist for the Urban Center for Computation and Data, was (to me) surprisingly frank and forthcoming about what they did. Our conversation is embedded below. CONT.

Alex Howard, TechRepublic

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