Measuring the uptake and implications of data-driven campaigning for party organizations – A comparative study of the U.S. and Germany

As parties rely increasingly on digital tools in response to the Covid-19 pandemic this is accelerating their use of so-called ‘data-driven’ techniques as part of their campaign strategy. This new approach brings an expansion in the scale and reach of the extent of personalised contacting or micro-targeting parties can carry out during elections. To date much of the attention on the growing use of data-driven campaigning or DDC has examined the impact of these more individualized targeting activities on parties’ ability and success to mobilize voters. Less emphasis has been placed on the internal drivers to adoption of DDC and the impact of the new infrastructure and expertise required to engage in this more data intensive mode of electioneering on party organization and internal decision-making. This paper aims to fill that gap by providing a clearer understanding of what this new mode of electioneering actually requires in terms of party organizational resources and comparing the extent to which parties in two major systems Germany and the U.S. – are actually engaging in data-driven campaigning. Specifically we aim to design a more systematic, transparent and replicable measure or index of DDC at the party level which we can use to better compare parties’ take-up, and also the key organizational changes it introduces to their internal workings. What are the new data and resources required for DDC, what type of personnel are required to deliver it, and does it change the nature and structure of campaign management, use of conventional or offline media, and who now controls strategic decision-making. To address these questions the paper is divided into two main parts. In part I we undertake a systematic review of the literature on the concept of DDC in order to arrive at a shared or ‘essentialist’ definition of the practice that is then operationalised by deriving observable indicators that measure the extent to which parties or campaigns are deploying DDC practices. These indicators will be converted into binary and ordinal variables and form the basis for development of a multi-dimensional DDC index that can be applied to individual parties. In part II of the paper we apply the index across two divergent party systems – the U.S. and Germany - and assign scores to parties using a combination of elite interview data and desk based research. The scores will be used to identify the key internal party organizational drivers behind adoption of the new techniques, and particularly how far features such as size, resources, ideology, internal structure and hierarchy, and primary goals determine adoption rates? In addition we will use the rankings to draw some preliminary conclusions about the impact of a more intensive use of the new techniques on other aspects of party campaign practice.