The way we live our lives online will make it easier for US presidential candidates to target their message
Read more: "Smart Guide 2012: 10 ideas you'll want to understand"
Do you live in Ohio and tweet about your church? The Republicans would like to have a word with you. Live in California and post pictures of your Toyota Prius? Barack Obama would like you to start a fundraising page.
The US presidential election in November 2012 is likely to be the most data-intensive campaign in history. The reason? We are sharing more information about ourselves - our interests, social connections and online behaviour - than ever. Savvy candidates can increasingly use this data to predict how we are likely to vote, which of us to target and how best to reach us.
In 2008, Obama's campaign used online social networks to not only get the word out, but also to track which issues groups of voters cared about most. They built computer models of voting districts that helped determine where to best focus money and volunteers during last minute, on-the-ground campaigning.
2012 could see campaigns bring this kind of data-assisted decision-making to the level of individual voters. Campaign strategists have long combined voter registration data with consumer databases and census information to construct voter profiles consisting of thousands of variables, such as the size of someone's house, or what magazines they read. Now these profiles can be beefed-up with real-time analysis of political sentiment via Twitter and blog posts.
Detailed information about individual voter interests and key political issues could also allow campaigns to craft narrowly targeted messages. Do you tweet about your love for Battlestar Galactica? Don't be surprised if the political messages you see online through banner ads or sponsored links are tailored towards a candidate's stance on science or space exploration.
Whether this kind of customised campaigning comes across as charming or creepy remains to be seen. But with about half of all Americans now on Facebook, voters will have to get used to campaigns using their information in all kinds of ways. Combine these huge data sets with sophisticated prediction algorithms and 2012 could mark the rise of the ultimate political machine.
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