New book says how political parties use data isn't a threat to democracy

Drawing on interviews with 329 campaigners in Australia, Canada, Germany, the United Kingdom and United States, the research reveals variation in the kind of data, analytics and technologies used by parties in different countries.

Much attention has been directed to the threat posed by the use of personal data, and the prevalence of increasingly sophisticated, highly targeted, and often invasive uses of people’s personal data deployed to suppress votes, manipulate voter preferences, or boost a candidates' popularity.

Yet these claims are often focused on the potential threat that data poses and it's often unclear whether these concerns are realised.

And Professor Dommett argues that data-driven campaigning should not be viewed as automatically problematic: “Data-Driven Campaigning is often viewed as a sinister threat to democracy, but data can be used in a range of different ways, which can be more or less problematic.

“Whilst there have been fears about fine grained micro-targeting, in practice we’ve mainly seen UK parties target messages at broad groups. What is clear is that data is now a normal part of campaigning, and we should expect parties to use data, analytics and technology to optimise their campaigns in 2024.”

This year, more than two billion people across 50 countries could head to the polls, including the UK with Prime Minister Rishi Sunak confirming there will be a general election in 2024.

Professor Dommett’s research is highly significant this year, due to the recent move in the UK to increase spending limits during an election, as it suggests large parties will have a decided financial advantage when it comes to the use of data in their campaigning.

Professor Dommett said: “The new increase to spending limits on election campaigning means larger, more affluent parties have an inbuilt advantage when it comes to being able to generate the insights that data can offer for a targeted campaign strategy.

“They can invest in more sophisticated data analytics operations, where in contrast, smaller parties often lack the ability to collect and analyse data, limiting their ability to capitalise on this resource. This creates important inequalities that will be made worse by the new spending limits.”

Data Driven Campaigning and Political Parties: Five Advanced Democracies Compared has been published by Oxford University Press, and is written by Kate Dommett, Professor of Digital Politics at the University of Sheffield, with Dr Glenn Kefford and Dr Simon Krushinski.