Newswise — A key element in winning elections, according to many practitioners, is successfully identifying citizens for targeted campaign communications. This is an example of what Abraham Lincoln used to speak of as his ideal " it is still referred to as "Lincoln's perfect list," says University at Buffalo political scientist Joshua Dyck, Ph.D., who studies voter behavior and presidential campaigns.
The Republican Party devised a perfect list using voter "micro targeting" in the 2000 and 2004 presidential campaigns. But a central tactic for implementing that that stragety is through personal-contact campaigning. And that's where the Democrats shine this year, Dyck says.
"The Republican Party's sophisticated use of micro targeting is why Bush won in 2000 and why the big Democratic voter turnout did not advantage Kerry in 2004," Dyck explains. "Micro targeters use all kinds of things like consumer lists and marketing files to find out that, for instance, you subscribe to hunting magazines. Hunters are likely against gun control, so they send you a targeted mailing that says the opponent will take away your guns. "In the 2008 presidential campaign, the Democrats, under the leadership of Howard Dean, have effectively employed micro targeting techniques to learn about and contact voters, but studies by Yale University have found that face-to-face interactions are still the number one way to mobilize someone to vote and the Democrats' addition of a massive face-to-face ground campaign has closed the gap by increasing the likelihood of Democratic voters turning out. "We are social creatures," Dyck says, "and the Dean camp sent millions of campaign workers to voters' doors " often more than once " to get them to register and vote, and as they did so, collected additional information about whether they were likely to vote, what their principle issues are and so on, so that could be used to identify the issues they might want to contact them about later. "This is the kind of organization usually associated with interest groups and constituencies like labor unions " precinct captains, walking lists, etc. It gets physically close to voters and makes them feel a part of something larger than themselves. Non-voters are marginalized people in some sense. They don't think they matter in this regard, and of course in some sense, they're right " one vote is unlikely to change anything. But, if they can feel a part of a larger group with the same interests like their own, they are much more likely to vote and vote those interests. That's what the Democrats have done this year."
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