Data doesn’t win elections; candidates do. Presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump bet on that idea last week when he announced his plan to rely on his personality and rallies in the general election instead of collecting data on voters. Trump has a point: The effect of “big data” and improved analytics on elections is often overhyped. Even David Plouffe — the architect of President Obama’s 2008 and 2012 campaigns, the most data-savvy in history — agreed that Obama’s “data processing machine” was not responsible for his wins.
But Republicans are worried, and for good reason: Trump’s assumption that the sole value of data is to win more votes is too narrow. His decision to limit the role of data probably won’t be the deciding factor in the 2016 election, but data organization and access are an investment in the future of the party. A presidential campaign presents a rare opportunity to cultivate the next generation of talent and collect a ton of new data on voters, and Trump’s refusal to do so means that Republicans may need to wait until 2020 or beyond to even the playing field with Democrats. [...]
Democrats now hold a substantial expertise advantage in digital data-driven campaigning, and the GOP admitted as much in their 2012 election post-mortem. John McCain hired only 15 data staffers in 2008, compared with Obama’s 131. To his credit, Mitt Romney increased the number of data hires to 87 in 2012. (Obama had 342). In 2016, Republicans were positioned to build on this effort and narrow the analysis gap between the parties, pivoting off of two consecutive losses into an innovative data strategy — just like in 1964 and 2004.
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