The Democratic advantage in digital, data, and analytics isn’t going away easily

[Commentary] Ted Cruz raises $1 million in the 24 hours after he announced his candidacy, and reporting highlights the “10 staffers who hold PhDs in behavioral science or analytics” who were behind the scenes trying to “maximize the output of their potential targets.” Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton’s campaign promises to “be staffed with more than 1,000 data geeks, techies and digital gurus.” In other words, the 2016 campaign is just beginning, and already “data,” “analytics,” “tech,” and “digital” seem even more prominent than in 2012. Much is said about the growing importance of these tools in modern campaigns. But less is said about the challenges inherent in using these tools. As John Sides and Lynn Vavreck argue, these tools require significant amounts of expertise and monetary resources.

In a paper that Christopher Jasinski and I will present at the upcoming American Political Science Association annual meeting, we examined the people who worked in digital media, data, and analytics on presidential primary and general election campaigns from 2004-2012. We built an innovative data set that marries Federal Election Commission and other data (from Democracy in Action) with LinkedIn data. This enabled us to chart the careers of 626 staffers that worked in digital, data, and analytics on these campaigns. Here is what we found:

First, we found very uneven levels of professionalization. Very few staffers work in digital, data, and/or analytics on multiple campaigns. Put differently, there are few career campaign staffers in these areas.

Second, we found a vast gulf between Democrats and Republicans. From 2004-2012, Democratic campaigns hired 503 staffers in digital, data, and analytics, compared with 123 Republican staffers. But the gulf goes beyond that. We also looked at the flow of staffers from the technology industry and commercial sector into politics. Campaigns that can attract talent from outside industry are likely to be more innovative and able to use the best practices of other fields. Here again, the Democratic Party was far more adept at attracting this talent from outside of politics than were Republicans.

[Daniel Kreiss is an assistnat professor at the University of North Carolina School of Journalism and Mass Communication]