Data and the Presidential Election In a competitive election every vote counts, but figuring out which votes to go after is becoming a huge focus for many campaigns. A well organized team has to solve several challenging problems. The team needs to plan on where and when to spend money in order to maximize their “dollars per vote.” It’s also important for a candidate’s team to understand their demographics and figure out how to maximize their votes. These complex problems can be solved through Big Data.
Big Data is a somewhat broad term that refers to the collection and analysis of large amounts of data. According to IBM there are four main dimensions to Big Data; volume, variety, veracity, and the velocity of analysing data. These dimensions show the wide range of Big Data and the large amount of possibilities for application. Big Data is being embraced by companies to help analyse and improve themselves. Virgin Atlantic’s IT director David Bulum said in an interview “We can get upwards of half a terabyte of data from a single flight from all of the different devices which are internet connected” (Finnegan). Their planes have sensors that record various statistics about each flight.
Virgin could then analyse the data they collected in order to find weaknesses or patterns. Another example of companies utilizing big data is supermarkets. Target creates a “Guest ID” for every customer and collect as much data as possible about each one. They track spending habits, when they arrive, how long they shop, what they buy, as well as personal information. This allows Target to get a view of demographics and undergo behavioral research. Target can also detect changing habits.
In one case Target realized that one of their customer. . field of big data. It will be fascinating to see the research into sociology, political science, and other fields boosted buy this new world of campaigns. Throughout the primaries and into the 2016 election, big data analytics will ramp up for both parties, as new tactics and strategies will likely come into play. The future of data mining will be interesting with the always growing computational power and our knowledge on how to use it.
Having a big data team will become a requirement for any businesses or candidate team for any election. Therefore, it is important for the population to understand how data is being gathered and to prevent personal information from being exploited. However in the future big data could also be useful for the voter when figuring out which candidate to choose. Whatever happens, the value of information in politics can only increase.
