At the SPSS Directions Conference in Las Vegas, I attended a keynote session: Capturing the Swing Vote: Micro-targeting in the 2008 Presidential Election. The keynote featured how SPSS Predictive Analytics was integral to "micro-targeting" likely supporters and undecided voters on election day.

Ken Strasma, president of Strategic Telemetry, working with the Obama campaign, and Alex Lundry, vice president and director of research at TargetPoint Consulting, working with the McCain campaign, discussed how they targeted the undecided and swing voters to ensure a victory for their party. They both utilized predictive analytics as a strategic weapon in determining which states needed the greatest amount of air and ground effort to produce a win for their party.

I also asked them if they were using predictive analytics to select the VP candidate, and they said no – that it was up to the individual candidate. Maybe they will change that going forward as many who talked about the election results have stated that the VP candidate had a very big impact on this election.

In addition, the Obama campaign made extensive use of text messaging. While I was attending an evening event the prior week, the gentleman next to me, who was from Colorado, received a text message that told him that if he was in line to vote, that he was entitled to vote even after 7 p.m. when the polls would close. Also, Facebook was another key part of the Obama effort.

I interviewed both of these keynoters after the debate, and you can here that interview at: http://www.b-eye-network.com/listen/9212.

Even though Ken was instrumental in winning this election, Alex was a large part of the success in the last election for George Bush. It will be very interesting to see the adjustments that Alex makes in the next election to counter the success by Ken in this election.

Technorati tag: Predictive Analytics, SPSS, Obama