Data and Democracy

Chapter 1. Essentials of Modeling and Microtargeting

Dan Castleman

Dan Castleman is cofounder and Director of Analytics at Clarity Campaign Labs, a modeling and targeting consulting firm for progressive candidates, political coalitions, corporations, international campaigns, and charitable groups. His expertise covers strategic program targeting, data analysis, modeling, and polling. One of the leading modelers in Democratic politics, Castleman has built voter targeting models for the Democratic National Committee, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and Democratic Governors’ Association, as well as dozens of individual campaigns and advocacy groups.

In the Democratic Party today, modeling and microtargeting have become ubiquitous. They are no longer peculiar curiosities confined to only a few forward-thinking campaigns, but de facto parts of any modern campaign with sufficient resources. While this leap forward can at least partly be attributed to coverage of their use by the Obama campaign in 2012, individual-level models have been used by Democratic campaigns since as early as 2004. Indeed, in many ways modeling and microtargeting are simply an extension of tactics employed to target voters at the aggregate level for decades. Over the past ten years, I have built countless models and advised dozens of political campaigns in how to use them. In that time, I have seen firsthand their rise in use, what they can (and can’t) do, and what methods for building them work ...