Candidates use databases, mapping technology to target voters

From...

by Mitch Betts

(IDG) -- The PC-based GeoVoter system in Darryl Howard's office is getting a workout before next week's elections. As executive director of the Oregon Republican Party in Salem, Howard is a leading-edge user of database and mapping technology that helps candidates deliver personalized campaign messages to individual voters.

"I'll give you an example," he said. "A Democratic candidate yesterday said he'd like to tax SUV owners. Our [Republican] candidate will drop a mail piece in the next few days based on the fact that I can tell you everybody who owns an SUV who's a registered voter in that district."

In other words, the mailings will go only to those 3,600 sport-utility vehicle owners, so there's no wastage. "All politics is not local. All politics is personal," Howard said.

Political campaigns have mined voter-registration and census data for decades, but now they're adding demographic data about things such as income, charitable donations, vehicle ownership and magazine subscriptions to create profiles of individual voters. When plotted on a geographic information system, the data gives campaigns a powerful tool for politicking at the household level.

Compared with the days of wall maps and push pins, "it's gotten a hell of a lot more sophisticated," said Wally Clinton, president of The Clinton Group, a Washington-based political communications firm for Democrats.

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The systems are still too expensive for small campaigns on shoestring budgets. But party organizations and federal campaigns see the databases as such a competitive advantage that many politicians are reluctant to talk publicly about the capabilities of the systems they've put in place.

The initial GeoVoter system cost roughly $20,000, plus thousands of dollars for data to pour into it, Howard said. "It was a large investment," he said. "But when I can tell you that this person, in this district, is a known contributor, likely to take a yard sign for a candidate, a member of a Christian organization, he signed a couple of initiatives, he has a hunting license and he owns a four-wheel drive [vehicle], I know what issues are likely to drive [his voting decisions]."

That kind of information can easily be stored in database tables, but pegging it to a map helps candidates see pockets of support and undecided voters. Then they can identify the best locations for town meetings, volunteer deployments, personal visits, billboards and yard signs.

"A state candidate comes into my office and says he'd like to know every Republican in Salem who lives on these seven main thoroughfares so that I can auto-dial for yard-sign locations," Howard said. "I could do that in a normal database, but on the map, you just point-and-click, draw a box around the street and set it up as a file for phoning."

The vendors of political mapping systems are little-known outfits such as Map Applications in Norwich, VT., which makes the GeoVoter software; Cartography Unlimited in Bluefield, VA.; and SpatiaLogic Mapping in Lafayette, CA.

The campaigns fill those systems with layer upon layer of data, starting with basic state voter lists. Washington-based Aristotle International Inc. offers a CD-ROM database of 150 million registered voters in the U.S., which can be sorted by party, voting history, age, district or 25 other criteria. Then the campaigns add credit reports, polling results, fund-raising data, responses to phone calls, attendance at political events -- even notes from conversations with voters about hot-button issues.

Some observers said there's a danger of a privacy backlash. Yet the data is publicly available, and the profiles are the same as those used by the direct-marketing industry. "I'll leave [the privacy debate] to the intellectuals," Clinton said. "It's my job to win elections, and this [database technology] is an indispensible tool for winning elections."

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