More on Microtargeting in Presidential Campaigns

The WashPost today has a nice article on how the Obama administration is using microtargeting to reach its voters this year (here is a super graphic).  I have already done a piece on microtargeting, but here is a nice 4 minute video on how microtargeting in campaigns is similar to consumer microtargeting to get you to buy products.  Unfortunately you won't see this topic in the campaign chapters in most US government books (which also means you won't therefore see it on the AP exam), but you will see it in this excellent e-book on US government (put it in the search engine at the bottom of the page) which came out last year.

Microtargeting

Even though microtargeting goes back to the 1990s, most give Karl Rove the credit for starting the practice at the national level, it is the practice of looking at our data and deciding what to sell politically to us.  It used (and that is a very relative term) to be just what you buy at a store (ever wonder what Giant and Safeway does with your information from your discount card) and now has online groups like Google or Facebook tailoring what you see ad wise.  Here is an article from today's NYTimes and here is a more definitive one from an Arizona publication on the 12th of Jan.  

Twitter and Electoral Returns

This is a fascinating piece that came out in the WashPost two days ago where four professors predicted the electoral returns of 404 of 406 House races in 2012 using mentions on Twitter for their predictor.  They threw out any races where there was no opponent (hence there are not 435) and used the normal socio economic factors for the independent variables (dependent is the margin of winning percentage).   Here is the draft of the as yet unpublished paper.  While it goes to say that traditional electoral forecasting is over, it does mention that you will still need it to gauge how races are going.  Whether you buy this, with microtargeting it is certainly an interesting time to be teaching electoral returns (wish AP and state exams reflected these items).