Analytics in Political Fundraising

Although it is generally referred to as "microtargeting," data mining has become an effective tactic for political fundraising strategy. In this feature piece about Bloomberg, John Heilemann writes:

What kind of campaign would Sheekey run? He isn’t saying. But judging from the one he devised for Bloomberg in 2005, it would be extremely sophisticated. Schoen points out that Bloomberg’s operation in 2001 was ahead of the Bush team’s now-famous use in 2004 of microtargeting—the new political science of combining consumer-database information with voter rolls to target people likely to be receptive to your message. And in 2005, Sheekey cranked up the tactic up another notch. In both elections, the Bloomberg campaign applied new technology, plus a boatload of cash, to the task of identifying and turning out independent and unenrolled voters. Hence the model that Sheekey would surely try to duplicate on a national scale.

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