Tech + Data in 2016 Campaigning

This past Wednesday Purpose hosted Innovation in 2016 Campaigning: What Works and What’s Hype. The event explored how the candidates in this year’s Presidential race are leveraging data and technology. Purpose CTO Josh Hendler led an expert panel including:

Nathan Woodhull, Founder, ControlShift Labs 

Nathan is the founder of ControlShift Labs, creator of software that empowers ordinary people with digital tools to collaborate on and win their own campaigns for social change, with offline support from their existing affinity organizations. Previously he was the Innovation Labs Lead at the Democratic National Committee and held a number of prior software engineering roles.

Amber Ott, Communications Researcher & Data Analyst

A researcher who assists organizations with making sense of public and stakeholder attitudes that impact their business, Amber draws upon both traditional opinion research methodologies and innovative analytical tools. With her extensive experience analyzing public issues and managing reputational risk, she works with clients to develop effective and efficient communications strategies.

Erek Dyskant, Co-Founder, BlueLabs

Erek is a co-founder at BlueLabs, an analytics firm dedicated to harnessing the power of data to produce meaningful two-way engagement between people and organizations. Erek focuses on bringing the innovations from electoral campaigns to other areas of social good — improving availability and quality of healthcare for underserved individuals, helping organizations and causes to engage with their supporters and communities, and scaling impact as organizations take on global challenges.

Hendler opened the evening’s discussion by pausing to reflect on (and celebrate) the fact that data/tech has really taken a prominent position in the public discourse this time around. From the Bernie Breach to Trump’s campaign not subscribing to voter lists, to Bernie and Hillary having polar opposite tech strategies (Bernie employing open source and Hillary top-down Silicon Valley tech), the media and the public have been focused on tech and data like we’ve never seen in past elections.

While the discussion touched on many facets of the campaign, a driving theme was the move in 2016 towards openness. Historically, campaigns have been highly secretive about their guiding strategies, protecting them as their greatest assets. A huge shift has occurred with this campaign as candidates are speaking openly about who they are targeting, their tech and data approach, and more. For example, Nathan pointed to the impressive amount of volunteer engagement on the Sanders campaign and how it has been inspiring to watch. He he had just spoken to someone working out of the same co-working space who basically quit his job to write code for free for Bernie’s campaign.  Sanders’ volunteers have made significant contributions, including the development of his Field the Burn app.  Ted Cruz has also been running a an innovative campaign, speaking outwardly about which voters he is targeting and launching the Cruz’s Crew app.

The panel discussed any risk involved with this type of sharing. Does this make campaigns sabotagable? The panelists all agreed that the outcomes from this have been overwhelmingly positive.  The power gained from bringing volunteers into the fold and giving them real agency far outweighs the risk. At the same time, despite the rising concern from the public over data security, there has not been a tremendous hesitation on their behalf to engage with the campaigns in new ways and give quite generously of their personal information. Erek surfaced the idea that this could be attributed to an unspoken social contract that has existed with voters since the Abraham Lincoln days that voter files are public domain.

While the campaigns this year are certainly more open than in the past, Amber reminded the audience that we likely won’t know all of the best data and tech strategies until after the election. So stay tuned for a follow-up discussion where we will dig into a post-election analysis!