Obama (Big Data) sets the Stage for New age Election Campaign

In the 2012 Presidential election, Nate Silver correctly predicted the winner of all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Silver's predictions of U.S. Senate races were correct in 31 of 33 states; he made the wrong prediction in North Dakota and Montana.


Obama proves (once again) that how social media, digital campaign (2008 general election) and data-driven campaign (2012) can play a pivotal role in shaping the outcome of the election. He did it during the Democratic nomination (defeating Hillary Clinton) and then Republican John McCain in the general election and now republican Mitt Romney in the 2012 Presidential election.


When we look back at the last 10 months of Presidential election campaign, we cannot ignore to see how smartly Obama worked (compared to Mitt Romney) get into the office for the 2nd term. He used Social analytics, social media and Big Data crunching to run his campaign, raise fund (remember dinner with Sarah Jessica Parker and George Clooney?).

Below is the analysis of Romney vs. Obama in the social media, which shows how Obama consistently maintained a substantial lead in social media:

Sharing one glaring data point on the impact of on-ground, smart campaign (based on the outcome of data analytics, social media sentiments etc). In Florida, Mitt Romney won pretty much in every county except Hilsborogh (Tampa, St Pete area), Orlando area, entire Southern Florda (Ft Lauderdale and Miami). My heart goes out for Mitt Romney, he must have spent millions of dollars and huge campaign time in ensuring that he covers most part of Florida to get all those rural votes but Obama must have campaigned where the majority of the population (about 50%) of FL are in the Tampa, Orlando and Miami area! So, there you go, even though Mitt Romney spent millions on campaign but that was not targetted enough to ensure that these highly populated cities vote for the republican party. This is just one data point on how Obama's smart campaigning paid off. If we look at all the swing states (Ohio, Nevada etc.), the similar story repeats; most of the highly populated areas went with Obama and rural areas went with Romney.


US demographic is more diverse (in terms of races, sex, age) than ever before (a representative split is shown below):

Black population: 13%
Hispanic population: 10% (and growing)
White population: 73% (and shrinking)
Asian: 4% (and growing)


Women: 155 million
Men: 151 million

Population with age under 20 = 27%
Population with age above 65 = 12%
Median age = 36.9 years

So, Obama understood (long back!) if you have to get (re)elected to the white house then you cannot ignore Hispanic, Black, young and women voters.

Definitely, data-driven decision-making played a big role in 2012 general election. Obama proved the rhetoric - "Work Smart (not Hard) to achieve the same or more". It will be interesting to watch, how the future of election campaigns shape up.



Source:
http://www.campaignpop.com/
http://www.cnn.com/2012/11/07/tech/web/obama-campaign-tech-team/index.html
http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/