How Big Data Plays a Big Role in Politics

Like it or not, politics today would not be what it is without big data and analytics. Our current president won the office through a close relationship with Cambridge Analytica, in which the analytics firm conducted analysis of raw data on the electorate. This analysis informed Trump’s strategy.

According to Trump campaign executive director Michael Glassner, the data came primarily from the Republican National Committee’s trove. Yet Wired reports that Cambridge Analytica does claim to possess 5,000 data points on every American. These data go towards creating a personality profile of each American for the purposes of psychographic targeting, which is a fancy of way of saying that the data inform speeches, ads, and decisions about which sections of the country a candidate should campaign in the hardest.

This does open up a conundrum. In politics, there’s a certain level of trust the electorate grants a candidate. But if everything the candidate says and does in the public eye is based on big data analysis that tells the candidate which words and actions will be popular, you can’t be sure the candidate’s ethical backbone is strong.

On the bright side of big data usage, Rutgers University reveals the role data analysis plays in public administration: The Open Government Partnership (OGP), a multinational coalition represented by more than 70 countries on every inhabited continent, serves as a highly successful example of how data mining and sharing can be extremely beneficial for public service and administration. The OGP makes its data-derived findings available to the public and works to promote transparency, empower citizens, fight corruption, and harness new technologies to strengthen governance. The overall goal is to make governments more responsive to citizens so that governance and services improve.

Data is an incredibly powerful tool in government. Politicians can use data for good, bad, or for administrative tasks that, on the face of it, don’t seem to have much ethical import. However, administrative decisions that seem routine and harmless can be quite the opposite.

Gerrymandering is the process of looking at voter party affiliation data and structuring districts accordingly. The modern process, through which parties create districts that give them the advantage in representation, would not be possible without predictive analytics software that shows what an outcome would look like if districts were structured a certain way. Political parties could use this same software to structure districts fairly, so that representation is directly determined by votes, but that’s not how it works in American politics. Rather, you get situations like in Pennsylvania: The Washington Post reported that, in 2012, Democrats won 51 percent of Pennsylvania’s popular House vote. Due to the Census Bureau’s data on population, Pennsylvania gets 18 representatives in the House. But because of gerrymandering, only 5 Democrats won seats in the house in 2012, instead of the logical 9.

Political success through the use of big data goes both ways. Barack Obama was hailed as the president who taught government how to ride the technology bicycle. He had a data-driven approach that helped him win two terms, and he believed in the power of big data to such an extent that he spearheaded data.gov in 2009. He went on to appoint former NASA employee Jeanne Holm to promote the usefulness of the site’s 250,000 datasets to schools across the nation.

While Obama used data to make decisions, Trump’s governing style seems to be the inverse. True, during the course of his campaign there’s no doubt Trump noted that Republicans were 17 times more likely to disapprove of the ACA than Democrats. He then shaped his promise to abolish the ACA accordingly. But now he’s in office, Forbes notes that Trump doesn’t so much use data to make decisions, he uses them to justify his actions. For him, Statistics serve as marketing grist. He makes decisions based on instinct and uses data to point out he’s in the right.

Hypothetically, politicians could use data to do what they’re supposed to do: improve people‘s lives. Dubai’s government is doing just that in its drive to create a smart city. The goal is to make people happier. The first step is to make Dubai a paperless city, where people can handle all government-related tasks through a centralized, cloud-based platform. Eventually, the entire city will be part of the internet of things, transmitting data any citizen can access. They’ll always be in the know about when city projects will be finished, and they’ll stay safer and happier because they’ll have constant information available concerning roads and traffic. At least, that’s the goal for Dubai.

Just like marketers, American politicians are now wise to the fact that you can harness big data to read the populace and strategize accordingly. Was Cambridge Analytica’s analytics really as integral in getting Trump elected as some suspect, or was Trump’s gut instinct the final prevailing factor? Chances are it’s a combination of both. Whatever the case, from here on out, political campaigns will doubtlessly seek to harness the power of big data. Let’s hope politicians use it to do some good, too.