Data

Data department targets voters, helped communicate Obama's 2012 campaign message

Data processing played a pivotal role in the Obama campaign’s ability to target and persuade potential voters in the 2012 election, former campaign data director Ethan Roeder argued in a lecture on Thursday evening. Roeder, who served as data director for both the 2008 and 2012 Obama presidential campaigns, explained that his department pioneered the use of vast data collection operations to aggregate open-source information about voters’ preferences so that they could be approached and persuaded by volunteers. Using polling data, consumer data and open voter files the data department created models to predict how likely voters were to vote for Obama or be persuaded to support or volunteer for the campaign. “It’s stunning to me how relatively simple data can give us such an edge in predicting where people are at in terms of voting,” he said. Open voter files in the United States contain simple information like voters’ names, addresses, ages, genders, voting histories, party affiliations, and racial backgrounds.