008 For the Love of Politics – For the Love of Data

History of Data in Politics

First off, 538’s podcast, What’s the Point did a great four part series on the data of politics that covered the history of politics from the late 1800s through the primaries. So please check out the above links for more context behind this. A brief history of data in politics shows the major ways candidates appealed to constituents progressed along this path:

• Party Elite chose candidates.
• Direct outreach – Candidates engage voters directly, including things like voting after parties offering booze to those who voted for a particular candidate.
• TV – When TV came along, suddenly candidates could reach the majority of voters just by running ads on three networks.
• Direct Mail – Politicians could use subscriber lists from certain magazines to target specific groups that might be interested in their policies.
• Micro Targeting – This started around 2004 where data analysis identified target demographics to go after, advertise, and appeal to.
• Individual Targeting – Howard Dean (2004) was a pioneer in this effort, coalescing state voter lists together and appending commercial data. This continued in 2008 with Barack Obama where they found that there was still a significant diversity in micro groups. The trend was refined in 2012 where campaigns used individual data to feed into, test, and refine their models.

However, there are roots back to 1891 when James Clarkson, the RNC chairman, assembled a file that featured the “age, occupation, nativity, residence and all the other facts in each votersʼ life, and had them arranged alphabetically, so that literature could be sent constantly to every voter directly.”10

The Obama campaign in 2008 and 2012 hired enormous amounts of staffers — 342 in the 2012 race alone in technology, digital data and analytics.

History of Voting Trends by State7

All Elections since 1876 (the year Texas A&M was founded, whoop!)

Most Democratic (1932)

Most Republican (1972)

Voter Turnout Rates

In voter turnout data by country since 2000, the US ranks #159 out of #196 with just over 55% average voter turnout. We can and should do better.

• 30+ vote much at much higher rates than younger voters.
• The more educated you are, the more likely you are to vote.
• Most commonly black or white; Hispanics are the lowest consistently since 1984.
• White share has been declining, but is still an overwhelming 77% of the vote8.

Sources:

1. http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/a-history-of-data-in-american-politics-part-1-william-jennings-bryan-to-barack-obama/
2. http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/a-history-of-data-in-american-politics-part-3-the-2016-primaries/
3. http://www.fec.gov/pubrec/fe2012/federalelections2012.shtml
4. http://www.electproject.org/home/voter-turnout/voter-turnout-data
5. http://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/2016/comm/electorate-profiles/cb16-tps25_voting_texas.html
6. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/elections.php
7. http://www.fairvote.org/voter_turnout#voter_turnout_101
8. http://www.idea.int/vt/viewdata.cfm
9. http://www.electproject.org/home/voter-turnout/demographics
10. http://41lscp16wiqd3klpnn1z0t2a.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Kreiss_NiemanFinal.pdf
11. http://nationbuilder.com/voterfile

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