Micro Targeting: The Point That CHP missed in 2014 elections
For months leading to March 2014 local elections, CHP
Istanbul mayoral candidate Mustafa Sarigul built his election campaign on governing
Istanbul without making anyone feel “other”. He was implying that he would advocate
for the rights of people who did not vote for him, and therefore targeting a
certain portion of electorate based on party affiliation.
It was just five days
before the election when Sarigul announced that all students would utilize public
transportation for free, and public transportation would be 50% off for
everyone during night hours. The promise mainly targeted low income electorate,
most of whom voted for AKP in the previous elections. Yet, five days probably
was not long enough for the promises to be even heard by the targeted audience.
It was clear that CHP treated 2014 local elections as a general election. CHP’s main electorate strategy was to reach swing votes through
ideological and party lines. Ideologically, the swing pool that CHP considered included
liberals, democrats, and nationalists. CHP reached this line by nominating “imported
candidates” from right who could find audience from CHP’s traditional
base, and from the swing pool. In party lines, the swing pool included
AKP, MHP and undecided voters. CHP worked on party lines by assuring AKP voters
that they would not be excluded from services, and encouraging other voters to
form alliance among CHP lines.
The pooling strategy has largely failed, because CHP put too
much emphasis on party and ideological lines of the electorate, while these lines were only
supposed to form a part of the baseline factors to be considered. As a result, CHP failed to understand
the real voting behavior of the electorate.
CHP needs to build its electorate strategy based on micro
targeting, which would cut across traditional categories and assess each member
of the electorate in its own term. Basically, micro
targeting gathers data about voters from a very large spectrum, including but
not limited to demographics, party affiliations, goods purchased, TV programs
watched and newspapers read. Than it forms an algorithm, which scores voters
based on their own terms. Using the categorization, the election campaign
directs its supports and messages towards the right voters.
A reasonable and simple algorithm could be something like this:
Voter score = .4*Party and ideological lines + .3*Demographics
+ .1*Goods purchased per household + .1*Type or newspaper read (supports AKP,
opposes AKP, or neutral) + .1*Type of TV programs watched
With such an algorithm CHP could determine specific
electorate groups to target. For instance, there is a woman whose name is Fatma, who is a high school graduate, resides in a middle income area, watches soup
operas, has three kids who are going to school and voted for the AKP in the previous elections. Fatma
is not likely to be in the labor force and is likely to be worried about her
children’s expenses. Campaign strategy towards her should focus on vouchers
such as free bus passes that would be advertised through months leading to elections.
When CHP does not utilize micro targeting and builds most of its electorate campaign on party and ideological lines, its assumed algorithm
looks something like this:
Voter score=
.7*Party and ideological lines + .3*Others
Such an algorithm definitely
misses many things, including Fatma’s worries about her children, family
income and effectiveness of airing a commercial during 11AM soup opera sessions.
As a result, CHP experiences heavy problems with understanding and
communicating with the electorate. As CHP leader Kilicdaroglu puts it “They (part
of AKP base) do not even listen to us”. However,
it can be the lack of variables in CHP’s assumed algorithm that is assigning people like Fatma
heavily on AKP side, which rules out the probability that she can be a swing
voter and which fails to find the right strategies to communicate with her.
The way out of this dead-end is not by moving towards right,
but by better understanding and responding to electorate’s demands. CHP’s first
post-election strategy must be examining the results box by box according to voter characteristics. Second, CHP needs to utilize micro targeting strategies to understand and communicate with the electorate. CHP needs to rediscover its biggest strengths, which are its social democratic policy approaches that can find large audiences, and that can be tailored specifically to electorate's needs.
Salih Yasun
Cleveland State University Undergraduate Student
yasunsalih@gmail.com
