Hacking the Electorate
How Campaigns Perceive Voters

Hacking the Electorate is the most comprehensive study to date about the consequences of campaigns using microtargeting databases to mobilize voters in elections.

Eitan D. Hersh (Author)

9781107501164, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 9 June 2015

270 pages, 31 b/w illus.
22.6 x 15 x 2.5 cm, 0.38 kg

'In Hacking the Electorate, Eitan Hersh has not only drawn attention to a critical feature of modern campaigns but he has also opened up an entirely new field of study in American politics. Commentators speak about the importance of 'big data' to contemporary campaigns and governance, but Hersh shows us the link between the available data and many well-known, if poorly understood, pathologies of our politics. Anyone interested in the trajectory of American campaigns and the important role of data and technology in them should read this book and heed its lessons.' Nathaniel Persily, James B. McClatchy Professor of Law, Stanford University, California

Hacking the Electorate is the most comprehensive study to date about the consequences of campaigns using microtargeting databases to mobilize voters in elections. Eitan Hersh follows the trail from data to strategy to outcomes. Hersh argues that most of what campaigns know about voters comes from a core set of public records. States vary in the kinds of records they collect from voters - and these variations in data across the country mean that campaigns perceive voters differently in different areas. Consequently, the strategies of campaigns and the coalitions of voters who are mobilized fluctuate across the country because of the different ways campaigns perceive the electorate. Data policies influence campaigns, voters and, increasingly, public officials.

1. Introduction, 2. The perceived voter model
3. The policy roots of elite perceptions
4. Campaign perceptions quantified
5. The perceived partisan
6. The public code of racialized electioneering
7. Persuadable voters in the eyes of the persuaders
8. Voters perceived in social networks and consumer files
9. Conclusion
10. Appendices.

Subject Areas: Constitution: government & the state [JPHC]