Data-Driven Campaigning: Evidence from Australia

Political parties are increasingly turning to data to improve the efficiency of their voter contact operations both online and offline. While not uniform across all parties or countries, evidence is slowly emerging about parties in many advanced democracies collecting data, building models of the electorate and then using these data and models to target voters at the individual level through digital advertising, and via field campaigns. According to some scholars, these developments are emblematic of a new era of party-based campaigning. Drawing on original research, including participant observation on the campaigns of two separate parties contesting the 2019 Australian federal election, as well as extensive interview data, I argue that the use of data by Australia’s political parties is relatively widespread, however, the efficacy of these data-driven and analytics inspired campaigns are questionable. Moreover, the evidence from the field campaigns, suggests there was little evidence of testing or targeting despite some parties investing significant resources in sophisticated modelling and analytics infrastructure such as web-based voter databases. Ultimately, I argue that the evidence from Australia suggests that we need to remain skeptical about the effects of data-driven campaigning, and that the more significant changes may be the parties themselves.