In a year of increased mail-in and early voting due to the coronavirus pandemic, the two parties are relying more on digital outreach to voters.
Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty ImagesWith just over two months to the general election, Republicans are still leading in efforts to collect and harness voter data to spur turnout, even as Democrats narrow the gap after years of internal dissent.
Sophisticated data on voter habits is part of the organizational arsenal driving modern election campaigns, with hundreds of millions of data points that can tell political parties anything from whether someone is registered to vote to whether it is best to contact them by text or email. Campaigns use this information to make sure they are encouraging turnout among people who are most likely to vote for them—or persuading those on the fence—and to avoid using resources on those who won’t.
Such data is viewed as even more important this year because of the coronavirus pandemic, which is expected to drive mail-in voting and force campaigns to rely more than usual on texting voters, targeting ads and other digital strategies rather than in-person outreach. With much of the populace already decided on how they will vote, according to opinion polls, spurring voter turnout will be key for both parties.
The GOP had a jump on the data arms race. In 2016, President Trump’s campaign used Data Trust, a for-profit information warehouse with an exclusive data-exchange agreement with the Republican National Committee, to power its digital operation. Mr. Trump’s win, clinched in several battleground states by small margins, prompted Democrats to invest in their own data operation, while Silicon Valley also tried to separately innovate and bolster Democrats’ data-gathering systems.
More than a dozen people involved with data work on the Democratic side say their operations aren’t collecting or sharing as much information as Republicans roughly two months before Election Day. Recent polls show Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden ahead of President Trump in a number of battleground states. With a tight race in some states, sophisticated voter data could be crucial, and people in some battleground states are already requesting mail-in ballots.
“Covid has fundamentally changed the landscape for how campaigns operate and how voters get information,” said Nellwyn Thomas, chief technology officer for the Democratic National Committee. She said traditional community organizing has given way to more phone calls, physical mail and digital advertising. “All of those are powered by having good data.”
Former President Obama’s campaigns were hailed for their data advances, but they didn’t turn all of that information over to the party. Republicans made big investments leading up to the 2012 election that resulted in them leapfrogging the Democrats.
Data Trust, the most widely used data warehouse on the right, provides a repository for roughly 2,500 data points about more than 300 million people that campaigns and outside groups such as super political-action committees can tap into, said Matt Lakin, its president. They can then use that information to target messages sent digitally or in the mail, or determine where to hold voter registration and turnout drives. Groups also feed new data they gather on voters back to Data Trust.
Data Trust, which has about 40 employees, brings in raw voter data from 50 states, such as lists of registered voters and voter history. Added to that is information purchased from other sources, such as contact information, as well as scores ranking how likely people are to vote, Mr. Lakin said. Republicans also have a similar data warehouse in i360, a data and technology firm backed by the Koch brothers, though it doesn’t have the same type of data-exchange agreement with the RNC and has branched into corporate work.
Since the 2016 election, Data Trust has been expanding its offerings, working to update state voter files, which include lists of registered voters, cellphone numbers and mailing addresses, much faster than it did during the last presidential cycle, Mr. Lakin said.
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On the Democratic side, state parties share voter data with the DNC, which is accessible to all campaigns. The DNC has added new tools and bought troves of cellphone numbers for those systems, which can be useful in both presidential and congressional elections in a year when the party hopes to flip the White House and Senate.
But the DNC’s data hasn’t been as extensive. And Data Trust was structured in a way that all candidates, party committees and outside groups could access it without running afoul of the Federal Election Commission prohibitions on coordination.
That is a setup Democrats wanted to emulate after the 2016 election. Their version, the Democratic Data Exchange, launched in 2019. It is live in about 10 states, including key battlegrounds such as Florida and Arizona, though it plans to be up in nearly all 50 states within the next month, said Chief Executive Lindsey Schuh Cortes.
While the Democrats’ exchange houses hundreds of millions of data points about voters, it isn’t a one-stop shop like the Republican model. For instance, groups still must turn to the DNC or a private data firm for voter contact information such as addresses or cellphones. And it has competition from other privately funded ventures touting similar services.
Ms. Schuh Cortes said Democrats had a bigger pool of companies, technologies and data available than Republicans did, and they didn’t need to recreate all the services Data Trust offers.
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In the last three years, the DNC has upgraded decade-old technology systems of 300 million Americans’ voting records, purchased raw data and hired more staffers with data expertise, the DNC’s Ms. Thomas said.
The Democratic Data Exchange took time to get off the ground, in part because state parties were hesitant to work with an outside trust, prompting tense negotiations.
Some billionaire Democrats also took their own swings at building data operations. LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman co-funded Alloy, which has raised more than $30 million to build a back-end infrastructure to deliver data, such as voter registration status, to Democratic and progressive candidates. Mr. Hoffman also helped fund the Democratic Data Exchange, after some debate over whether to work with him because of his other political work, according to people familiar with the discussions. A spokesman for Mr. Hoffman declined to comment.
Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg launched Hawkfish LLC, which spent millions on data targeting and digital ads testing messages for his short-lived presidential run, and it now has contracts with several super PACs as well as the DNC, where it is focusing on raw data gathering, people familiar with the work said. Ms. Thomas said it is one of dozens of DNC vendors. A spokesperson for Hawkfish declined to comment.
A person close to the Democratic Data Exchange said it spent a lot of time “educating” potential investors on how their operation was different from those other efforts. Some Silicon Valley donors also wanted to fix the Democrats’ data problem, hoping to work on the “silver bullet” for politics, a former DNC official said. “But here’s the thing: Infrastructure isn’t sexy.”
Ms. Thomas, a former Facebook Inc. manager, said: “There are things that the DNC as the party infrastructure and the public option for the Democratic side can do that third-party groups cannot do as effectively.”
In mid-2019, with two full-time employees on board, the Democratic exchange launched a beta version in time for the Kentucky gubernatorial race that November.
Mary Nishimuta, executive director of the Kentucky Democratic Party, said the beta version identified nearly 15,000 supporters, who they could then contact by tapping DNC data.
Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear won by about half a percentage point, or roughly 5,000 votes. A month later, the Democratic Data Exchange clinched an agreement with all 50 state parties.
Now with 15 employees, it is working with the Kentucky state party to relaunch for the 2020 election. “The maximum benefit would be if we could start using it tomorrow,” Ms. Nishimuta said, pointing to an earlier voter turnout program this year. “It’s pretty ramped down as you get closer to the election and more people have already cast their ballot.”
—Keach Hagey contributed to this article.
Write to Emily Glazer at emily.glazer@wsj.com and Deepa Seetharaman at Deepa.Seetharaman@wsj.com
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