How Modern Campaigns Are Going to be Run

This Fall, I worked for the New Jersey Democratic Party as the Field Director in the 12th Congressional District. It was the district of retiring Congressman Rush Holt, and in it we elected New Jersey's first African-American Congress-person from outside of Essex County, and the first African-American Congresswoman in the state's history. In electing Assemblywoman Bonnie Watson Coleman to Congress, not only was history made, but also barriers broken. Congresswoman-elect Watson Coleman will represent a district that is the "whitest" of any member's district who is a member of the Congressional Black Caucus (at 77% caucasian). Yes, the district is "Democratic" in performance, usually, but it did go for Chris Christie in 2013, and there were some serious concerns about it.

In the aftermath of that race, I did an interview with AdAge, a marketing and media based news site that focuses in on data use, both in politics and outside of it. In it, I talked about campaigns getting away from the old "partisan" targeting, where you go find the Democrats who vote consistently and just try to talk to them all. Now we were applying scores to individual voters, and getting to really drill down into the voters we wanted to reach. We were able to break voters out into four groups this way: Likely supporters, Likely supporters who we needed to push to show-up, Up-for-grabs "swing voters" who would vote for sure, but could go either way, and people who we weren't really trying to talk to. We only knocked on the doors of the likely supporters who we needed to show up, while we focused our phone calls and mail into the "swing voters," and spoke to them with messages that were focused more on issues they care about. Needless to say, when we got 61% of the vote on election night, we got it right.

Campaigns are getting better and better at reaching the right audience, and they have to. If I have 50 volunteers willing to knock doors today, and can get at best 100 doors from each of them, i'm capped out at 5,000 doors. If i'm having a normal day, I might get one-fifth of them to answer the door and talk to me, giving me 1,000 contacts. There are going to be over 100,000 votes in most Congressional races, so I can't get too many doors wrong and expect to reach the people I need before an election.

It goes beyond that though too- who am I trying to reach with media buys, and where do I reach them is a paramount question to most campaigns. Having scores and an idea of who my target is with a message allows me to buy my media time better, and to get a much better idea of what I need to do with my money in general.

Campaigns are a highly technical thing, and very difficult to run right. Data use is going to rule the future of them, and probably end up driving the two parties in somewhat different directions. For Democrats, if the demographic divisions of 2008 and 2012 hold, the game will be about finding more likely supporters and turning them out to the polls. For the Republicans, if things hold, it will be largely about persuading voters open to their messaging. For both, knowing precisely who these voters are will be key. Over are the days of the "garage consultant" who can't get down into the technical weeds. Those days just won't work anymore.