When you say the campaign "used barcodes" what do you imagine that means?
Campaigns - at least smart ones - use barcoded forms to make it easier for volunteers to enter information. That way they can put the response info from calling or doorbelling into the computer by swiping a laser pen over a form and hitting a couple numbers rather than typing and finding and generally doing things that are time-consuming and lead to mistakes. Alas, most campaigns get the training to use the barcodes but end up not doing it.
Barcodes are just a way to represent a number in a database. They have nothing to do with SKUs on products or assimilation into The Borg.
Republicans do use more consumer data in their targeting, mostly through marketing consultants, as I understand it. Democrats focus more on voter lists. Both sides are very unsophisticated relative to private industry.
What the new system the Dems use allows for is information to be changed dynamically. During the Kerry campaign, a lot of people got absolutely inundated with the same calls. This time you may have noticed a lot less repetition. When you talked to a volunteer on the phone, your responses actually were recorded in a meaningful way this time! Wow!
The biggest change to data this year was a huge expansion in the way volunteers could be managed with Internet tools.
The "data mining" that went on is really more data sharing. The fact that the Democratic party now has a voter list backbone has moved the world from one of campaigns hording their little spreadsheets of names to a sharing across campaigns through a central system.
And it's all done by people a lot like you.
Stuff like that -- or not like that also -- would be
> interesting.
>
> thanks!
>
> shag
>
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-- peace,
boddi
http://financialroadtosocialism.blogspot.com/