Micro voter targeting is all set to enter India with 2019 Lok Sabha polls

NEW DELHI: Your online shopping preferences, stay at a swanky hotel or a mere visit to a parenting website may just swing your voting preference in the next elections.

Intrigued? Micro voter targeting, so far an alien concept in Indian politics but widely used in American presidential polls, is set to make a debut in the country in the 2019 general election. Political parties are gearing up to package targeted communication tailor-made for you based on your life choices. So your brand of chai, your child’s school, gym or your preferred airline will be used to make political messaging more palatable. Though a new concept, micro voter targeting is all about data mining and enriching the data with more specifics. ET takes stock of the new trend in politics which promises to change the way elections are fought in India.

How it works
The next election will be fought on mobile phone – this is the refrain of functionaries of political parties from across the political spectrum. But the new trend is bigger than pushing creatives on WhatsApp groups or Facebook. This is a planned offensive specifically working on you for a good one year or more.

A political party takes electoral rolls and enriches the data. This data is enriched with many data points – you may have downloaded an app giving access to other apps on your phone, credit card usages or simply the web pages you frequent. These data points are used to work out profiles and then juxtaposed with the electoral rolls. Political functionaries then form WhatsApp groups or send Facebook invites.

These could be through resident welfare association groups or even hobby class groups. “If I send you a ‘good morning’ message daily, chances are that within a week you will block me,” a member of BJP’s IT cell said on condition of anonymity.

“But if you are part of a group and get interesting reads every day, you will be that much more amenable to the messages received on the group. This is nothing but engaging and then cultivating by pushing messages you want to read – not what I want you to read.” Once a group is organised, the messages pushed across are tailor-made for you.

An interesting newspaper article on blue whale, try-me easy dhokla recipe, new drugs in colleges or a carjacking incident could be used to educate you. In between, a creative on the success of Swachh Bharat Mission or a protest against rising fuel prices would be pushed. “Since it is coming on an acceptable group of your interest, an individual goes through it and then starts believing it. The stage comes that a floating vote is converted,” said another functionary. The ratio – of one political message among five apolitical messages – is gradually reversed closer to the election.

It gets bigger and better
BJP had used IT and data analytics in a big way in the 2014 general election. However, it was really about quick opinion polls to gauge how politically palatable a remark by its prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi was and pushing political messaging through social media.

Micro voter targeting takes it to a bigger level. A Congress functionary, who did not want to be identified, told ET, “This allows you to look at voters personally. When you look at a page of an electoral roll, it looks like random data – add to it profession, age group, web pages visited, apps used for online shopping, and it gives you a picture of a person.

These data points throw up a bigger picture which can be used to target voters directly and more effectively.” So far, the parties have been following the concept of “panna pramukhs” (page leaders) to address voters at the booth level. Panna pramukhs are foot soldiers who are given one page of the electoral roll and are asked to ensure that voters on that page are given voter slips and promotional material, and turn up to vote on the voting day. With micro voter targeting, panna pramukhs get a bigger role in the virtual space.

The American Story: Trump Vs Clinton
American parties used micro voter targeting in a big way in the Donald Trump vs Hillary Clinton election fought last year. They had access to electoral rolls and they enriched the data from customer databases (bonus cards, newspaper subscriptions, etc.). Individuals were then sifted as dedicated Republicans, Democrats or floating votes. Direct and targeted personal actions (home visits, telephone calls, e-mail campaigns) were decided household-wise based on this information. In a close election, micro voter targeting was used to even identify voters who had not voted in the previous elections.