Big Data Meets Presidential Politics

“Part of the reason for the Obama victory was the campaign’s ability to mobilize the vote, and it used a lot of data to do that,” says Alex Black, who leads CSC’s Enterprise Intelligence Practice. The Obama campaign deployed a team of technologists who built a sophisticated data platform code-named Narwhal that proved highly effective for raising money and tracking voters.

Narwhal served as the technical backbone for campaign operations, integrating data to enable functions such as customized email fundraising and identification of likely voters. Obama campaign staffers used the system to analyze voters’ registration data and online habits. “They developed models predicting who was most likely to vote and then targeted follow-up events at those people,” Black says.

Social media played a prominent role in the election. During the campaign, Deen Freelon, an assistant professor in the School of Communication at American University in Washington D.C., blogged extensively on the use of technology in the election. Freelon says that although more research needs to be done to determine the impact of social media, “There is no question that both candidates took social media seriously.” He says the best evidence of its impact is a study which found that people are more likely to vote if they learn, via social media, that their friends will vote.

As a by-product of the technology efforts, and the fact that Democratic voters skew to a younger demographic, the Obama campaign maintained a lopsided advantage in social media circles. The experts say organizations can capitalize on lessons learned from Obama’s victory in the use of data analytics and social media.

Analytics comes to the fore

Obama’s victory confirmed the value of using technology and data analytics. The technology side of Obama’s campaign was organized into teams to oversee technology, digital and analytics. Engineers working for the campaign developed tools such as Dashboard, an online organizing community, and Obama’s analytics team developed The Optimizer, a tool for placing television advertisements in front of the most optimal audiences for the least amount of money.

“The Obama campaign proved the power of big data,” says Gary Jackson, CSC’s director of Business Analytics. One lesson learned from the election is that enterprises can employ a concept called the “psychology of analytics” to prompt action from a customer. Jackson notes that many companies spend a lot of time and money on big data projects only to end up finding out the same insights they already knew. He calls it “Your Mom’s Mom Is a Woman” analytics. The key for businesses, he says, is using data analytics to target the right people.

“The Obama big data team sought out those who were already advocates and did matchmaking using what CSC calls ‘affinity ratios’ — linking people with the same life-style and life-stage details with people in their social circles to drive action,” Jackson says. “We believe that customer behavior changes only when influenced by other human beings — social circles — or by being compared to people like them.”

Dr. Freelon thinks there is no one-size-fits-all strategy that will work for every organization. “Just because Obama did it doesn’t mean it is right for everyone. Still, we do know the Obama campaign conducted rigorous message testing of its Web presences to determine what content and style elicited the greatest responses from users.”

Engage your customers

Similarly, Black says the Obama team successfully engaged in microtargeting voters. “But the key is what you offer them, and how you make it stick,” he says. So how can companies successfully engage with their customers?

“Companies have a little bit harder time with engaging — turning it into a relationship that is continuous — so it helps not only with the purchase, but also helps postpurchase activities, using the product or suggestions about the product,” Black says. He advises enterprises to employ a lot of different tactics, and make social media a part of an engagement strategy. “Constantly review the analytics, build models and do a lot of testing and re-testing to see what works best.”

Jackson says Obama’s team searched to find people who are the influencers and added them to social circles of people who would actually vote for him in the states he needed to win. “He used the ‘psychology of analytics’ to drive the vote in his favor,” he says. “Simply put, big data is about pairing up the ‘want to’s with the ‘have to’s. ”

Still, not all analytical data is useful and accurate. Companies should beware of poll bias. “A lot of people think that when there’s a sophisticated algorithm or model, it is statistically pure, yet we know many have bias in them. Whether it’s the bias of the researcher or the bias of the mathematician, all points in the building of models and algorithms are subject to bias.”

In the end, just as in political campaigns, success in business is a matter of engaging customers. “This campaign demonstrated the ability to reach people,” Black says. “We’ve got to get our arms around big data and social media and build an analytical framework so we can gain insights and figure out how the data is going to affect our businesses. Enterprises need to learn how to use the data to come up with ways to improve the operation.”