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‘Very Creepy’ Details of Obama Campaign’s Voter Data-Mining Effort

Oct. 3, 2012 7:59pm Liz Klimas

Mother Jones, the same site that leaked the recent videos of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney at a private fundraising event, has a profile detailing the data being collected on voters for the re-election of President Barack Obama by his campaign staff.

As Gizmodo puts it, it is a “huge” effort to a “very creepy degree” that could be collecting more information than you might expect.

Mother Jones Profiles Obama Re Election Campaign Data Mining Effort Used to Target Messaging to Voters

(Photo: AP/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

The Mother Jones piece is primarily a profile on Harper Reed, the chief technology officer for the Obama re-election campaign, who heads a team described as “100 data scientists, developers, engineers, analysts, and old-school hackers [that] have been transforming the way politicians acquire data—and what they do with it.”

Mother Jones reports that the Obama campaign gets its voter information from the following sources (emphasis added):

There’s your basic voter file, publicly available information provided by each state, which includes your name, address, and voting record. The party’s file, compiled by partisan organizations like VoteBuilder, includes more detailed information. Did you vote in a caucus? Did you show up at a straw poll? Did you volunteer for a candidate? Did you bring snacks to a grassroots meet-up? Did you talk to a canvasser about cap-and-trade? Contribution data, which the campaign compiles itself, includes both public information that campaigns disclose to the Federal Election Commission (FEC) and nonpublic data like the names of small-dollar donors.

By the 2000 election, political data firms like Aristotle had begun purchasing consumer data in bulk from companies like Acxiom. Now campaigns didn’t just know you were a pro-choice teacher who once gave $40 to save the endangered Rocky Mountain swamp gnat; they also could have a data firm sort you by what type of magazines you subscribed to and where you bought your T-shirts. The fifth source, the increasingly powerful email lists, track which blasts you respond to, the links you click on, and whether you unsubscribe.

By pulling together databases, analysts are tracking trends and targeting these emails specifically to voters’ tastes. There are also apps, which TheBlaze has reported on before, that door-to-door canvassers can use to get more information about voters before speaking with them.

Mother Jones also points out the usefulness of social media to glean information on voters. My.BarackObama.com, for example, began taking information from Facebook on users when they logged on through their social media account. It states that users consented to the data harvesting first.

These are just some of the ways data is collected.

Mother Jones doesn’t leave Romney out of the mix either. It makes a comparison between the data-mining efforts of the two, finding that Romney has hired more consultants to work on this front while Obama has more actual team members. It reports Zac Moffatt, digital director of Romney’s campaign, targeting “off the grid” voters — those who might not watch TV or would zip through commercials on shows they recorded.

“In terms of just the sheer amount of data that political candidates have on you, I think everyone finds it creepy,” Daniel Kreiss, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill professor who wrote the book “Taking Our Country Back,” told Mother Jones.

Still, many would point out what the candidates are doing in terms of data mining is not so different than what Facebook, Google or other commercial entities do to best target ads or learn more about users.

But how important is such detailed data to best tailor candidates’ messages in an election? With close elections such as those seen in recent decades, former director of technology at the Democratic National Committee Josh Hendler told Mother Jones the “quality of data” could be the difference between winning and losing.

Read the whole of the Mother Jones piece here. Mother Jones’ Tim Murphy who authored the profile also put together this flow chart — Stalk the Vote — to show how data is collected.

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Comments (28)

Qoheleth
Posted on October 5, 2012 at 10:47am
I’m hoping that “name, address, and voting record” means your name, address, and whether you voted in previous elections. Anything else (except whether you registered as a Republican, etc.) should be illegal. It wouldn’t hurt to clarify that.

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Patriot_Against_Evil
Posted on October 4, 2012 at 3:24pm
Obama can kiss my a@@!!!
When are people going to wake up that it was MALCOM X who was Obummer’s dad?????? Read his speeches/interviews and the CHANGE he wanted is happening NOW. Hello???? They look the same, same height/weight/body frame and he was a community organizer too. OMG why aren’t more people seeing that it is MALCOM X who was his dad??????????? Don’t believe me? Do your own homework. We have radical terrorist in our White House and associates with the Muslim Brotherhood and praises Islam. God help us. Try to take my gun too Obama cuz I will NEVER bow down to you and your evil ways.

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blackyb
Posted on October 4, 2012 at 12:19am
America saw who Obama is on the inside tonight because he is shallow and hollow. He has nothing inside but rhetoric, legacy from his father(s,) mother and grandparents. Obama is in Truth out of his league. He only knows how to divide and have fringes to riot.

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- Stoic one
  Posted on October 4, 2012 at 6:44am
  and we now find out he is filled with:
  http://hillbuzz.org/time-to-tell-everyone-you-know-about-jeremiah-wrights-down-low-club-barackobama-presobama-26407?fb_action_ids=438812929498025&fb_action_types=og.likes&fb_source=aggregation&fb_aggregation_id=288381481237582
  
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denkat56
Posted on October 3, 2012 at 11:28pm
these creeps use every underhanded way they can to cheat ,lie and steal just to make sure obama wins.

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- TurboCat
  Posted on October 4, 2012 at 6:05am
  Super Control Freaks is who they are.
  
  Report this comment
- TurboCat
  Posted on October 4, 2012 at 6:14am
  I’m not too surprised. If you spend the big bucks you can hire world class P.R. firms just to drive a particular news agenda and narrative. It happened between P.R. firms and the mainstream media when they coordinated to smear George Zimmermann. I read some detailed and credible sources at the time including some excellent articles on WND. I’m sure they are still available. It was a real eye-opener because I also learned that during the 2007 and 2008 campaign O-blame-a had none but the very best of P.R. firms polishing up his image. Or rather creating and crafting a well guarded image for him to perpetrate upon unsuspecting Americans.
  
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- Blogdwight
  Posted on October 5, 2012 at 8:32am
  TIMEOUT! The fact is that the Romney campaign does this stuff, too. I have an app on my Android that tells me folks in my neighborhood that are targets for a door knock based on data mining by either the campaign or the RNC. I’m a Romney supporter and local Repub city council member.
  
  Both sides do it. But I don’t know if both sides do it well. Just sayin’.
  
  Report this comment
Obama_Forward_Over_The_Cliff
Posted on October 3, 2012 at 11:04pm
As the Obama commie-White-House says, Americans “have no reasonable expectation of privacy”.

After Obama is arrested, tried, and hung for treason and sedition against the United States Of America, then we can make all this SPYING punishable … just like for any business or the country.

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Ghandi was a Republican
Posted on October 3, 2012 at 10:43pm
The very first thing obama’s people did was hijack, rearrange, revise and begin compiling from the White House website. Other agencies were doing the same with goofy zombie apocalypse (how fitting) circuses to get kids to the site where they could mine data, get email addresses and use them to send propaganda and ‘get out the vote’ prompts come election day. THIS on official and taxpayer funded sites. A clear violation and prosecutable election laws violation. Google with the largest database and mining capabilities has a seat in the Whitehouse. It’s rotten.

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Snowleopard {gallery of cat folks}
Posted on October 3, 2012 at 8:40pm
Sounds like many of Obama’s opposition will be visited by law enforcement; IRS; Union thugs; Radical extremists and so many others.

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- kickagrandma
  Posted on October 3, 2012 at 8:49pm
  LOCK AND LOAD, Snow!
  
  I just saw a great gun poster today that said something like, “If they come to get your guns, give them your bullets!” The illustration answered the intent of the message.
  
  PRAYING ON, AMERICA! On our knees for this country and our GOD IN HEAVEN.
  
  Report this comment
- KangarooJack
  Posted on October 4, 2012 at 7:19am
  Usually my computer goes nuts and even trying to shut-down won’t work. {Have to unplug}. Amazingly this co-incides with Obamabot trolls when they’re on a roll. lol
  
  Report this comment
AAC
Posted on October 3, 2012 at 8:39pm
Wonder what will happen to all those people who promise to vote for Obama but don’t show up at the polls. Could get ugly for them.

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DavidintheD
Posted on October 3, 2012 at 8:34pm
Clearly if reelected His goon squads will not have any trouble finding the lot of us.

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- AAC
  Posted on October 3, 2012 at 8:37pm
  They know where you live…
  
  Report this comment
- randy
  Posted on October 3, 2012 at 8:43pm
  Wonder when they will make all conservatives sew a yellow patch on their clothes?
  
  Report this comment
- kickagrandma
  Posted on October 3, 2012 at 9:36pm
  @RANDY ~~~ I don’t look good in yellow patches. Make mine red, white and blue with my Colt 45 attached!
  
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DavidintheD
Posted on October 3, 2012 at 8:32pm
Nixon was an amatuer compared to the communistandthief.

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Calm Voice of Reason
Posted on October 3, 2012 at 8:24pm
Both candidates are doing it, but the headline only wants to talk about Obama?

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- BCanook
  Posted on October 3, 2012 at 8:29pm
  How do you know both candidates are doing it?
  
  Report this comment
- BCanook
  Posted on October 3, 2012 at 8:33pm
  Do you know anything about psychology?
  
  Report this comment
- Valezka.Vidra
  Posted on October 3, 2012 at 8:53pm
  They DID talk about both of them. Sheesh. Read the whole thing.
  
  Report this comment
Cosmos102
Posted on October 3, 2012 at 8:23pm
What if you have an Obama phone? How much will they know about you?

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- Gorp
  Posted on October 3, 2012 at 8:31pm
  Well then they will know you are a loser low-life and not count you.
  
  Report this comment
dickdastardly
Posted on October 3, 2012 at 8:22pm
If Owe-bama were white, there would be a march on the Waffle House already, calling for his impeachment…his foreign policy has gotten at least four Americans killed (including our Ambassador to Libya), weakened us militarily, weakened us in the eyes of the world, drove us to the brink of bankruptcy (and the National Debt keeps climbing), gas prices have more than doubled, he and his administration (including Hillary Clinton) lies continuously to our faces, he acts more like a rock star than the leader of the free world (calling himself “eye candy” on The View), willing to throw Israel under the bus, by-passes Congress on major issues that should be passed by them & the Senate alone instead of the Dictator In Chief, refuses blame on any issue that makes him look bad (and he deserves plenty) yet wants the lion’s share of credit for Bin Laden’s death (which Seal Team Six deserves alone), and the list just keeps growing. He has to be voted out in Nov. or America as we know it will cease to exist and the new incarnation will not be pretty or for the better.

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RJJinGadsden
Posted on October 3, 2012 at 8:13pm
Had the technology been available at the time, I wonder who would have abused it more, Nixon, or 0bama?

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- Chromo200
  Posted on October 3, 2012 at 9:36pm
  Both to me are on the same platform. Under nixon there was no fancy computers bu his actions was just as bad.. Obama is using the system, and if he finds out who I am writing anti Obama comments on the Blaze, too bad I figure finally the bullet with my name on it surfaced. At least I won’t have to pay the Obamacare fines and my body parts are useless, their are all worn out.
  
  And if Romney is mining data and when elected uses the data improperly well I made a mistake and will live with it.
  
  Report this comment

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