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Ask any political professional about how to win an election, and they will tell you voter turnout is key. With the 2014 mid-term election approaching, Democrats and Republicans are using a new set of digital tools to try to identify people who will vote for their candidates and ensure that those people cast ballots.


Minnesota DFL Party Chair Ken Martin is worried about voter enthusiasm, and with good reason: In 2010, Democrats lost control of the state Legislature, and Gov. Mark Dayton barely won his race largely because many people who typically vote for Democrats didn't show up on Election Day.


This year, Martin hopes an array of new data tools available to the state party and adopted from President Barack Obama's presidential campaigns will help inspire the party's core supporters to show up at the polls - and persuade a few new voters to support Democrats, too. 


The DFL's tools are the byproduct of a behind-the-scenes data war being waged between Democrats and Republicans locally and nationally. Expanding, refining and finding innovative ways to manipulate voter information is political gold, and Democrats are ahead of the game so far.


Minnesota Republican Party Chair Keith Downey has noticed, and has spent the last year trying to improve and organize his party's voter files. 
Democrats had "more organization and more information at their disposal for their campaigns," Downey said. "We were been beaten on the ground game in the 2012 election."


At DFL headquarters in St. Paul, voter file manager Sarah Black is demonstrating an app on her smartphone that's part Google maps, part voter database.


The tool shows volunteers "who they wanted to speak to, how many they had spoken too, who they've moved," Black said. "You can build out lots of neat ways to visualize this data."


Voter maps are just one of several data tools the Democratic National Committee has been perfecting for years, explained Martin. 


About a decade ago, the national party combined voter data from all 50 states. The DFL constantly adds to the file and pays to access it - a sum that's relatively small compared to what it would cost for each state party to build its own. 


Having detailed and accurate voter information paid off in the 2012 election because it helped volunteers better target specific voters, Martin said.


"Republicans went into a precinct and talked to 500 persuadable voters," Martin said. "Because of the resources we have and the ability we have to target, we could go to the two people in that precinct that we needed to move to win."


This year, the DFL will have access to even more digital gear as part of what the Democratic National Committee calls 

. In part, the initiative will make the data analytics tools used by Obama's campaign available to states to be used in down ballot races. 


Among them is a social media app that will allow DFL supporters to spread the word about rallies, events and fundraisers for Gov. Mark Dayton and Sen. Al Franken, but also for candidates for the state House, where Republicans have a good shot at picking up seats. 


The idea is that people will be more likely to show up if they hear about an event from a friend, Martin said.


Digital gadgetry aside, the DFL is also using voter information to shape its campaign messages. 
Information collected about voters includes what kind of cars they drive, what magazines they subscribe to and what charities they support. It all helps the party get a better sense of who their supporters are and what they care about.  


All that private information is shielded from the volunteers and candidates who will ultimately use voter information, Black and Martin said. 


In an off-election year when the two candidates at the top of the DFL ticket won by whisker-thin margins, Martin said gathering so much information is key to motivating Democrats to vote.


"We know there's a set (of Democrats) who are consistent, reliable voters," Martin said. "But within that Democratic base, are there voters that need that extra push? And within that, there are subsets of voters that we know who fall off during election years - communities of color, new immigrant communities, younger communities. We know that if we can shrink that drop off, we're going to be in OK shape in 2014."

, Republicans say they are behind the curve when it comes to manipulating voter information, in part because President Obama's campaign put an enormous emphasis on using technology to reach and persuade voters and in part because the GOP hasn't 

shared voter information at the same level Democrats do

, a think tank housed within the Republican National Committee where the data-savvy will conjure new ways to target voters. 


Minnesota Republican Party Chair Keith Downey agrees his party is behind in the data wars. 
And while Downey said campaign volunteers can expect to see more sophisticated voter tracking tools this year, he's been more concerned with cleaning up and organizing voter information the party already had.


Downey started by merging the party's three separate voter lists. At the same time, the party linked its information to the Republican National Committee's national database, which has meant more accurate and more frequently updated information, Downey said. (Until recently, Minnesota was one of a few states that maintained its own voter database.)


And then, Downey set out to find new voters and to listen closely to what they care about. 
With the help of volunteers across the state who door-knocked, telephoned and spoke with people at local events like parades, the party was able to add 300,000 people to its voter files. 
"In general, we're still catching up," Downey said. "We need the basic technology to run affective political operations and a full-blown field operation, that's our primary goal."

Politics and Government News

Catharine Richert

Author

Ask any political professional about how to win an election, and they will tell you voter turnout is key. With the 2014 mid-term election approaching, Democrats and Republicans are using a new set of digital tools to try to identify people who will vote for their candidates and ensure that those people cast ballots.


Who's peeking over your digital shoulder? Democrats and Republicans

Go Deeper.

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