Chapter Eight (N&T) Flashcards
what is microtargeting?
refers to the tactics utilized to turn data into strategy and represents a perceived advance upon existing targeting tactics, moving to a more granular ability to understand and segment the electorate.
what is big data?
refers to the adoption of data resources, many of which were developed in the consumer marketing sphere.
What was one of the most important changes in the campaign?
the emerging ability to communicate with voters at an individual level. For example the advent of political direct mail.
what do the new data elements include in their repository?
detailed demographic information, including gender, age, race, ethnicity, education attainment, income, occupation, and many other elements. The consumer data elements were so granular, they delved into very niche consumer patterns, such as identifying enthusiasts of various pastimes (cooking, crocheting).
because of the amount of data elements they had what did they do to make it easier to target voters?
the solution was campaign micro targeting =a systematic process by which data analysts, statisticians, and computer scientists could evaluate data elements in the context of campaign strategy.
what does micro targeting look for in the electorate?
looks for patterns in survey responses.
what is the candidate support score?
The end goal here is to assign to every voter on the file a 0-100 probability score, based on the likelihood that the voter will support your candidate. The analysts create a short questionnaire to survey at least a few thousand voters.The campaign will then use that model to drive their voter targeting and strategy. These models can then be overlaid with other types of models such as issue or message responsiveness scores.
what was the most important shift in the 2020 election cycle?
which was the shift by election officials around the country to alternatives to mass in-person voting on Election Day. This included significantly expanded access to mail voting, voting early in person over a much longer period, ballot drop-boxes and innovations like drive-through voting.
why did the shift in election officials allowing alternatives to in person voting matter?
Campaigns could no longer treat Election day as the culmination of their efforts since people would be voting earlier and mailing in their votes. They were faced with the extension of election day. 2020 also changed if a voter was going to vote reliably because of the new voting methods that were introduced
