Political Campaigns Mining Online Data To Target Voters

New submitter nicoles writes with this quote from an AP report: "The Romney and Obama campaigns are spending heavily on television ads and other traditional tools to convey their messages. But strategists say the most important breakthrough this year is the campaigns' use of online data to raise money, share information and persuade supporters to vote. The practice, known as 'microtargeting,' has been a staple of product marketing. Now it's facing the greatest test of its political impact in the race for the White House. ... The Romney team spent nearly $1 million on digital consulting in April and Obama at least $300,000. ... Campaigns use microtargeting to identify potential supporters or donors using data gleaned from a range of sources, especially their Internet browsing history. A digital profile of each person is then created, allowing the campaigns to find them online and solicit them for money and support."

Comments

So...

[betterunixthanunix]

With the combination of this and search engines trying to tailor results to individual users, can we expect to see even more polarization between supporters of the major parties?

Is your name Ron Paul?

[cpu6502]

Are you anti-war, pro-bill of rights, and anti-deficit spending? If not then you're not getting any dollars from me Romney or Obama.

But I guess you already knew that from my web surf history. "Running-up 2 trillion in debt is unpatriotic!" Yeah. I agree Candidate Obama. You ran up almost 3x that amount; Romney looks set to do the same.

Re:Is your name Ron Paul?

[StevenMaurer]

Obama is anti-war, he is getting us out of Iraq and Afghanistan as gracefully as possible.

Obama is pro bill-of-rights. He's signed three laws allowing for better access to firearms (not passed when the GOP was fully in charge under Bush), and unlike Ron Paul, he doesn't think government should be regulating women's wombs.

Obama is anti deficit spending. He has come out publicly in favor of making multi-millionaires and billionaires pay at least the tax rates of their secretaries and taxing corporations that outsource jobs rather than those that keep jobs in the U.S.

Further, as you will see from this chart, the deficit is almost entirely due to things done during Bush's term. And the chart doesn't even point out that the "Economic downturn" was caused by the GOP and conservatives deregulating banks so they could gamble with depositor's money backed by the taxpayer. (Nothing forces a brokerage to take FDIC insurance, but if you do, you shouldn't be able to gamble with other people's money.)

So now will you be intellectually honest enough to support Obama now that all your concerns are addressed? I doubt it. Everything I just wrote was just a google search away, but you clearly didn't bother doing that. So I conclude that your reasons are little more than excuses, because you have a dream that some day you'll actually end up wealthy enough to pay the Buffet tax.

Ain't going to happen, pal.

Re:Is your name Ron Paul?

[cpu6502]

>>>So now will you be intellectually honest enough to support Obama now that all your concerns are addressed?

I'm not voting for either of these two banker/corporate puppets (Romney, Obama). I didn't vote for Bush or Clinton either. I would be an idiot to do so..... are you voting for Obama? Even after you've seen him in action? Wow. I hope he wins reelection, just so the next four years reveal TO YOU how bad he is. Maybe when he starts rounding-up Americans under the NDAA, or signs the CISPA, or has the TSA randomly stopping us on the street for patdowns (as they are already doing in Philadelphia, Houston, Detroit, Miami, etc) you will finally WAKE up.

Then again maybe not. A lot of people still loved Corporatist Mussolini even as he killed their neighbors. (No I'm not saying Obama will start killing Americans..... though he did assassinate 3 of them in Africa.)

Re:They need to do better

[lightknight]

"Both sides have absolutely no idea how to appeal to the average voter." -> Well, duh! It's hard to talk with a silver spoon in your mouth. Plus the only time they speak with the average voter is while they are running an election campaign; and even then, they ask questions like "You are voting for me, right?" and "What do I have to do to get you to contribute to my fund?"

On a side note, I love how they attempt to fix the difficulties with the Financials industry. Aside from saddling the taxpayer with the bailouts (dumbest move, politically, anywhere, ever), I get to enjoy listening to the cacophony of attempts to regulate or deregulate said industry. We have one party, who wants to blindly remove laws -> "Yes, let us remove the laws which introduced a trade barrier into this market, while we remove the laws which stipulate that selling fraudulent securities to buyers would be punished harshly"; the other party, on the other hand, wants to blindly add laws -> "Yes, let add the law that forbids trading outfits from driving up the price of a stock moments before they put through a client's purchase order, while we add a law that puts the taxpayer on the hook for millions of extremely-risky mortgages." I swear to God, it's like that (spam) scene in Monty Python where no matter what pick off the menu, it has to come with a side order of corruption.

Me: "So, what I'd like is for you to drop the protectionist policies that have unduly enriched the few while thieving the rest of us; I'd also like to have this thieving / fraud nonsense go away."
Party of Purple: "Sure. Sure. We'll do all of that, and we'll also include this law which charges people excessive amounts to buy or sell various positions."
Me: "Umm, no. I want what I asked for, not that extra bit."
Party of Purple: "Yes, we're giving you what you asked for."
Me: "But not that 'charging people excessive amounts' bit, right?"
Party of Purple: "*"
Me: "Hello? I don't want that positions thing to be a part of this legislation."
Party of Purple: "But it has to be. That's the only way it will pass!"
Me: "That's right. I don't want that part to pass into law."
Party of Purple: "But we already wrote it up with that in there."
Me: "Then write a new one."
Party of Purple: "Too late, it already passed into law; we had to make some concessions though, so only the part about taxing people excessively was saved."
Me: "OMFG!"

And that is how our Congress works.