Predictive Analytics for Political Campaigns: How Predictive Analytics Impacts Elections?
Predictive Analytics for Political Campaigns: Concerning data analytics, it is required to study and analyze past behavior to predict the future. In the 2008 Presidential Election in America, Obama’s party leveraged the power of data-driven strategy in its political campaign to take first-hand advantage.
A data analytics team of 100 people worked dedicatedly for Obama’s election campaign. This is a classic example of the impact of data analytics in election campaigns.
Data analysis plays a significant role in almost everything from recommending eCommerce products to customers using predictive analytics to electing a candidate of a democratic country.
Obama’s campaign made the use of data analytics in election campaigns more popular. Data analytics helps in understanding and adapting to the voter’s sentiments. Now, let’s figure out how data analytics affect elections and effectively use it in political campaigns?
What Is Predictive Analytics for Political Campaigns?
The question is about how political parties can take advantage of data analytics and big data tools to engage prospective voters. Interestingly, many political parties are already leveraging the power of data analytics.
It is to note that big data play a vital role in elections across the globe. Elections are a way of change for a nation. It becomes important for contesting candidates and voters to understand the importance and consequence of big data and predictive analysis of election results.
How Predictive Analytics Impacts Elections?
It is common to view predictive analytics as a magnet to attract voters as this analytics system gives huge benefits to businesses. Amazon is one among many top companies in the world that use the power of machine learning, data mining, and big data to predict what the end-user is going to buy, and therefore keeps its stock ready accordingly.
The process of data analytics also helps make accurate decisions, product development, and increasing revenue at the same time. Predictive Analysis is not only limited to its technological advantage for winning electoral battles but also has to offer a lot more than that.
Political Predictive Analysis is a way of understanding the voter’s behavior and building respective strategies according to their sentiments and interests.
Technologies like data analytics help in addressing the key issues that matter most to people. Therefore, predictive analysis and big data can provide a whole new and winning dimension to political campaigns that can benefit the party and the nation and its people.
Campaign Data Analytics Tools
Political parties using data mining, machine learning, and big data in their campaigning strategy have the edge over those who use traditional political campaigns.
The edge is created by connecting to voters over online channels like social media that includes Facebook and Twitter. It helps parties to figure out the emotion and standpoints of voters on social media channels.
Data analytics is now used by Indian Political Parties to build strategic campaigns, target prospective voters, hire volunteers, and optimize respective channels to reach every voter with a personalized message at their virtual doorstep.
Let’s understand at first what Data Mining is? Data Mining is the process of segmenting and filter out the right data from a large online informational warehouse for the right purpose.
Data Mining uses advanced techniques such as Artificial Intelligence, Statistical Tools like cluster analysis, and neural networks to unfold prevailing trends, relationships, behavioral patterns that would have otherwise remained uncovered.
Data Mining is the technological way to identify and address the hidden rules underlying the database. It is also referred to as data surfing that helps identify insights and patterns from huge repositories.
Big Data Analytics and Predicting Election Results
In was at the US Presidential Elections in the year 2012, Big Data Analytics was used prominently. It is noted that a total of whopping $7 billion was spent on election campaigning strategies, and out of that, 10 percent was used in online advertising by the two parties.
Barack Obama and Mitt Romney both had their strategies chalked out. However, the winner executed the campaigning plan in a better way.
It is to note that Obama’s team was fully aware of the importance of Big Data activities and did all the preparations in advance, 18 months before Election Day, to face the challenges and difficulties.
They primarily focused on a single data point repository, and the data metrics were optimized every day. Their data analytics team, too, had skilled recourses compared to that of the 2008 election campaign.
This planning was a perfect contrast to Romney’s plan. The biggest change the winning political party made here was to shift gear from the traditional way of reaching voters, which merely means to send one broadcast message to the entire country, covering everyone irrespective of gender, age, geography, and any other determinant that can be thought.
Now, this is where big data helped the winning candidate to reach the target audience, understand their issues, and engage with the voters according to their taste and preference.
It is way smarter to send the right message to the right audience and at the right time rather than pushing campaigns randomly. Big Data helps political parties get close to voters and allow them to send them personalized messages according to their needs.
Election Prediction Using Big Data Analytics
The challenge is to engage and get voters through the power of technology. This now seems easier to do with the advent of modern technology and the rise in the youth population.
In India, a total of 100 million new voters were added in the year 2014. The larger portion of this number has its presence over social media that can be leveraged by political parties in data analytics to ideate their political campaigns.
Conclusion
A whole new dimension has come upfront with the way elections are fought in modern times. The advertising campaigning spent in 2009 and 2014 Indian elections witnessed a huge jump from $83 million to$300 million, respectively.
The prime reason was the rise in Digital Marketing. Every experienced politician who used instincts and gut feeling for campaigning is now using data analytics for making better political decisions.
Even programmers, engineers, and data scientists have now started to enter this data analytics field as it is profitable and requires talented and skilled professionals.
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