Data Mining in Politics

Political advertising has evolved drastically over the past few elections. In 2008 only around 10% of advertisement funds were spent on online ads. In the last election, somewhere between 20% and 25% of ad dollars were allocated for online usage. There is a reason for this and that is because it works. Candidates can spend much less money to target demographics than ever before. Candidates can create many different ads and not simply be limited to social geography. So how do campaigns get the information to target you?

Arguably the four corporations that divulge the most information from internet users are; Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and Yahoo. When you use these websites, you give more information than you might think. Most of you have noticed within the last year or two there has been an advanced evolution of online advertising. You look up a few different backpacks on REI and EBay, then much to your surprise when logging onto Facebook the backpack you were looking up shows up on the right column of your profile as an advertisement. Obviously this is not a coincidence. This is a product of certain sites taking the information from your web searches and selling them to companies who in turn targeting you. This is called commercial targeting advertising.

This same process is being used for political advertisements. Anything from visiting Christian websites, to Facebook friends “liking” Mitt Romney may cause you to be targeted by the Romney Ryan ticket. Much of this information companies take from your web-browsing is compiled into a profile. This profile can then be matched with voter registration files to target you quicker. This is an aspect of online advertising that people find the most disturbing. While the information on the profiles created is erased, they sometimes save your information from the last two to nine months. Many consider this a breach of privacy.

To stave off the regulations on this $31 billion industry, companies like Google and Facebook have created a notice on some of their advertising space that alerts you when you have been targeted. While you cannot prevent being targeted with this notice, it’s at least good to know some companies are attempting to protect consumers. 

http://www.kdnuggets.com/2012/07/on-point-political-data-mining.html