Determined to retain their majority,Republicans are using an enormous database of political, financial and even religious information to “micro-target” voters in next month’s election.
The Republican party now targets voters like Visa targets customers, Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman has said on more than one occasion. “We target voters based on what they do, not where they live. And we spent the last five years acquiring a huge amount of data.”
The data goes way beyond the paradigm of Democrat vs. Republican. Think Crest vs. Colgate, SUV vs. minivan, Mac vs. PC. All this information, plus a voter’s religious affiliation, magazine subscriptions and much more, go into an enormous “Voter Vault” that has turned into a not-so-secret weapon for Republicans in an exceedingly difficult election cycle.
“Whether it’s consumer data of how they spend money, when they voted in primaries, what organizations they give money to, we’re going to target them,” Mehlman said. “The biggest focus of my chairmanship has been to take what was in ’04 something we experimented with in 11 states, and institutionalize it. It is now available in all 50 states.”
The Voter Vault is being used heavily by Republican candidates who want to energize voters to show up at the polls Nov. 7. Although Democrats once dominated the get-out-the-vote contest, also known as the “ground game,” Republicans took the advantage in 2002 and have been honing their skills ever since.
“Get-out-the-vote efforts are absolutely critical,” White House press secretary Tony Snow told The Examiner. “And we feel very confident, not only in the quality, but also in the enthusiasm, of the people on our side who are involved in get-out-the-vote efforts.
