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With the Republican convention in the bag and the Democrats just getting started, I read a great piece in the NY Times by Sasha Issenberg , basically admitting that journalists are unable to keep up with the reality of the activities of the campaigns. The premise here is that political campaigns are no longer about the overt big picture messages and activities like the convention speeches. Now, they are about the long promised hyper-segmented, audience specific activities that may not even be visible to a reporter following candidates on the stump.
By learning from retailers, social media, Big Data analytics, advertising, and hyper-local marketing activities, political campaigns are now getting closer to their audiences because they are able to actually understand those audiences, and then to not only understand who is reacting to an issue, but who the next group will be to react. This is not about a simple set of variables being tracked over time; it is more strategic, with different data from many, many sources being brought together to build not one picture, but many.
Sound familiar? This is exactly what Alteryx customers do every day. A great example is Drew Brighton, from TargetSmart Communications , who provides some great insight into the reality of bringing together voter registration and consumer marketing information.
The changing nature of the US population (read a great blog post on the US Census 2010 data from our CEO Dean Stoecker here ), along with changes in behavior, access to technology, and types of engagement in the political process, is enabling a new way to look at what it means to build a campaign. We more often hear about coalitions winning elections, but these coalitions are not political organizations, they are the patchwork of citizens that the modern campaigns, using Big Data analytics have been able to build.
We’ll talk more about the realities of election analytics throughout the rest of the campaigning season, so stay tuned . . .
- Paul Ross
Related Info
Drew Brighton, TargetSmart Communications talks about voter registration data
Dean Stoecker, Alteryx Chairman and CEO discusses the 2010 Census Data Engine
