Microtargeting
Politicians use microtargeting all the time and it has been more obvious to voters with this last election for President Obama. Technically, “microtargeting is the use of political parties and election campaigns of direct marketing data mining techniques that involve predictive market segmentation” (Microtargeting). Microtargeting is not just one type of marketing technique but rather a bundle of them that “identify consumer tastes and behaviors” (Brennan). Politicians now have a third arm to reach swing voters with the use of microtargeting. It is a rather uncomfortable term but sometimes the details are in the data that will get those final voters to vote for them.
Campaigns can use the information they get from this data to “give pollsters, campaigns and interest groups a sharper idea of how candidates and issues may fare at the ballot box” (Brennan). Political strategy firms compile this information either buy gathering it themselves or buying it. They will then “match it to the publicly available voter rolls that were digitized as a part of a new federal law aimed at efforts to help improve voting procedures after the ballot controversies at the 2000 election” (Brennan). They then aggregate the information to user IP addresses on line and track them from there hoping they will glean some information as to how voters might vote.
Should we be concerned about what campaigns do with the data after they have used it for their political gain? Possibly yes because there does not appear to be any control over who buys it and what they use it for. Senator Leiberman said “the data has been commercially available data for years, we’re not targeting you by who you voted for, and we’re targeting you if you tend to vote or participate in the democratic process” (Brennan). This is a vague answer that does not instill confidence for voters concerned with