Election Day is here again. Debates, advertisements, phone banking and now we find out the results of all that effort. Regardless of where you fall on the political spectrum, you can be sure that data science was key to the campaigns and approaches. This interesting topic came to us from Towards Data Science in their article, “Understanding Voting Outcomes through Data Science.”
Back in 2008, Obama’s team assembled a huge staff of analysts to work with the terabytes of collected voter data. The results of their analytics included a number of strategies to target specific constituents and disseminate information and donation requests to them based on exactly the issues that matter most to them. Nothing has changed, with maybe the exception of nefarious parties interfering with some of that data.
We are being monitored constantly in service of directed advertising, whether it’s in the political spectrum or elsewhere. I have no real complaint about that, but I desire an equal opportunity to have access to candidate data in an easily digestible form. The information is out there, but it’s a lot of labor for individuals to take on by ourselves.
Let me take this opportunity to encourage you to exercise your right to vote, if you haven’t already.
Melody K. Smith
Sponsored by Data Harmony, a unit of Access Innovations, the world leader in indexing and making content findable.
