Innovations and Challenges in Data-Driven Campaigning: Insights from Sweden's Multi-Party System

Political campaigns have evolved with the integration of advanced analytics and digital data. This has enabled campaigns to precisely target voters and personalize their messaging. Although there have been growing concerns over the ethical use of such strategies, recent research suggests that these concerns may be overstated. Political parties, particularly in multi-party systems, are only slowly and gradually adapting to the benefits of online technology (Dommett et al. 2022). However, our understanding of what drives data-driven campaigning in multi-party systems is limited. In these systems, parties often need to cooperate and form coalitions, influencing campaign practices and, for example, reducing negative campaigning. There are also substantial regulations that restrict parties in this regard, especially in Europe. This study examines data-driven campaign practices in Sweden. We chart the attitudes, areas of implementation, and barriers to adoption of data-driven campaigning. Our empirical analyses, build on extensive interviews with key campaign managers in Sweden during the 2022 election year. Preliminary results show that data-driven approaches are mainly seen as an additional communication approach, but we find indications of a growing importance internally and for strategic purposes. Swedish parties are highly skeptical of data- driven approaches for policy development purposes. As for challenges, all parties face structural limitations due to Sweden's small population, which creates difficulties in disaggregation. We also find that some parties experience the social media platforms themselves to work at their disadvantage.