Why Elections are Marketing & Advertising Campaigns for Political Candidates

Image by isymmetry.com

Below is an example of how Political Campaigns used Big Data from the 2012 Presidential Election.Today is Election Day in the United States. There are many candidates who are up for election. However, the most followed race is the Presidential race between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. These candidates have been selling and marketing their vision for America for many months. These candidates have been doing everything they can to get elected. Their campaigns resemble those of consumer products. These candidates send out direct mailings. They make in person appeals for your vote along with commercials. Consumer product companies use these marketing techniques. Both candidates are using social media effectively. There is a big focus on which campaign is the most effective on social media. However, social media is a basic requirement for every marketer and politician to promote, sell and market their platform of ideas. Being that everyone is expected to be on Social Media channels, I think that big data and its use is a more interesting topic.The Romney and Obama campaigns are using big data to reach out and market to voters. The candidates are using their websites to market to voters. According to a report that aired on Bloomberg West, Barack Obamas sitebarackobama.comis placing 87 tracking cookies on peoples computers who access the site. Mitt Romneys sitemittromney.comis placing 48 tracking cookies on peoples computers. For those of you who dont know, cookies are software that track what sites you visit online. Many marketing and retail companies use data obtained from cookies to market to their companies. So what are the campaigns doing with all of this data? Both campaigns are using the data obtained from these cookies to create targeted ads to voters according to a Bloomberg West report.