California shoppers, Schwarzenegger is watching you - CNN.com
Great...yet another way that the politicians can bug the hell out of us. A friend already has told me horror stories about them clogging up his answering machine with recorded messages of "vote for ME." I guess we know where these candidates stand on privacy issues.
California shoppers, Schwarzenegger is watching you - CNN.com:
LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- Gin or vodka? Ford or BMW? Perrier or Fiji water? Does the car you buy or what's in your fridge say anything about how you'll vote?
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's campaign thinks so.
Employing technology honed in President Bush's 2004 victory, the Republican governor's re-election team has created a vast computer storehouse of data on personal buying habits and voter records to identify likely supporters. Campaign officials say the operation is the largest of its kind in any state, at any time.
Some strategists believe consumer information can reveal a voter's politics even better than a party label can.
"It's not where they live, it's how they live," said Josh Ginsberg, the Schwarzenegger campaign's deputy political director.
The idea is an outgrowth of techniques that businesses have long used to find new customers. Using publicly available data, the Bush campaign in 2004 knew voters' favorite vacation spots, religious leanings, the music and magazines they liked, the cars they drove.
Few people might realize how much information is publicly available, for a price, about their lifestyles. Companies collect and sell consumer information they buy from credit card companies, airlines and retailers of every stripe.
Using microtargeting, as the practice is known, Bush's campaign teased out supporters in swing states such as Ohio. Schwarzenegger -- whose political operation is run by two Bush veterans, campaign manager Steve Schmidt and strategist Matthew Dowd -- is ripping a page from that book.