麻豆传媒

WITH just one week to go until the most unpredictable UK general election in a generation, you鈥檇 think that every vote counts.

Not so. If you have already decided who to vote for, know when you鈥檒l be going to the polling station, and plan to stay up all night to watch the results come in, the politicians don鈥檛 care about you.

The two biggest parties, Labour and the Conservatives, are fighting a surge in support for what had been minor parties. The only predictable outcome is a hung parliament, in which no party has an overall majority. That means it鈥檚 the undecided, unmotivated and uninterested voters who will decide this election, if they can only be coaxed to the polling booths. Increasingly, parties are turning to data mining to get them on board.

鈥淚t鈥檚 the undecided and unmotivated who will decide the election, if they can be coaxed to the polls鈥�

The 2012 US presidential election, which Barack Obama won in part due to the Democrats鈥� ability to target certain voters, showed the power of having a solid data team as part of the campaign.

鈥淭here is a lot of opportunity to be increasingly clever,鈥� says Andrew Whitehurst of for all three major UK parties. His colleague watched both sides in the last US presidential campaign drumming up support on the same street. 鈥淭he Romney camp knocked on every single door, and the Obama camp knocked on about seven.鈥�

With memberships at an all-time low, the UK parties don鈥檛 have the ground troops to waste on the Republicans鈥� mistake. Instead they need to use data to identify people who are most likely to support them, and to make the effort to cast their ballot.

The process starts with the electoral roll, which lists the name and address of everyone in the country who is registered to vote. Parties blend in any information they have gathered about you from canvassing, along with consumer data and even social media profiles. 鈥淚t鈥檚 not just official data,鈥� says Whitehurst. 鈥淧eople are increasingly giving over more and more information about themselves.鈥�

In the US, the Democrats used this data to build a model that gives each person a score based on their support for a particular party and how likely they are to vote. These predictions can be plotted (see graph) such that the people at the edges aren鈥檛 worth spending resources on: either they have already decided who to vote for, or they are entirely disengaged.

鈥淚n the middle are people who might vote and you know support you, or at least you think would support you if they had the right information,鈥� says Tiffany Washburn, a former data analyst for the Obama campaign and now at Google.

Replicating this in the UK is harder, as campaign spending restrictions and data protection laws limit what parties can do. What鈥檚 more, the multiparty nature of UK politics makes such modelling a headache. In the US, an environmentalist who supports gay marriage is almost certain to be a Democrat, but in the UK, ticking these two boxes doesn鈥檛 pin down someone鈥檚 party.

Instead, the parties must leverage information gleaned on the doorstep or through phone canvassing to make more generalised predictions, says Whitehurst. 鈥淭hey will try to develop profiles to say: we know you and we know loads of other people who fit into the same buckets. Can we then discern where other potential voters might be, who also fit this profile and who we haven鈥檛 doorstepped?鈥�

Having identified these people, the parties can decide how best to reach them, whether by knocking on doors, leafleting or emailing.

The latest addition to the arsenal is Facebook advertising that exploits information you鈥檝e added to your profile. 鈥淔acebook allows quite a rich range of targeting options,鈥� says , who previously ran online campaigns for the third major UK party, the Liberal Democrats. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 the big difference now from five years ago.鈥�

Gathering that all-important canvassing data is also a challenge in the UK, where the humble clipboard still reigns supreme, hampering the ability to access and record voter preferences in detail. 鈥淧eople should be able to knock on doors holding an iPad and have the voter information right in front of them,鈥� says , who explored the Conservative party鈥檚 use of technology in a book entitled Cameron鈥檚 Conservatives and the Internet. 鈥淎s soon as they input that data, it should be sent up and logged centrally.鈥�

Some parties allow activists to access voter data by smartphone or tablet, but this has not yet taken off, says Whitehurst. The Conservatives鈥� Votesource system, for example, is so new that on the learning curve.

Partly because parties can鈥檛 always roll out cutting-edge techniques, a few candidates are going it alone with decentralised systems. One is , which helps canvassers log voter鈥檚 interests to the cloud. On polling day, users can also tick off people they know to have voted, ensuring no campaign resources are wasted.

Having accurate records makes campaigning three times more efficient, says Thomas Borwick, founder of Kanto Systems. 鈥淚n a perfect system you have the right person knock on the right door, who has something in common with the voter, can engage them in a conversation and make sure they go to the polling station.鈥�

Other ad-hoc methods, says Whitehurst, include using constituents鈥� emails to target people on particular issues, studying Transport for London data to figure out the busiest times to canvas commuters, or even trying to sweet-talk people using dating apps like Tinder.

鈥淭ransport for London data shows when to canvas commuters. Or try sweet-talking people on Tinder鈥�

The election鈥檚 outcome could result in even more data mining. The Conservatives have promised a referendum on whether the UK should stay in the European Union 鈥� a nationwide, binary choice much closer to a presidential election, which should make US techniques easier to import.

鈥淲inning elections nowadays is not really about convincing people, it鈥檚 about mobilising people,鈥� says Whitehurst.

This article appeared in print under the headline 鈥淢ining for every vote鈥�