Romney's Data Cruncher

By: Chris Cillizza

The Washington Post

Thursday, Jul 05, 2007

"In late 2002, Alex Gage sold his share of a well-established polling firm and set about convincing Karl Rove that he had the answer to ensuring President Bush's reelection.

"His pitch was simple: Take corporate America's love affair with learning everything it can about its customers, and its obsession with carving up the country into smaller and smaller clusters of like-minded consumers, and turn those trends into a political strategy. The Bush majority would be made up of thousands of groups of like-minded voters whom the campaign could reach with precisely the right message on the issues they considered most important.

"At first, Rove and campaign manager Ken Mehlman had doubts about the potential of microtargeting, according to Bush pollster Matthew Dowd."

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"[But] it wasn't long before this new, more sophisticated form of data mining became part of the mythology surrounding Rove and his role as 'the architect' of Bush's reelection. Its use in Ohio, in particular, was credited with unearthing Bush supporters and delivering the state and the election to him.

"Now Gage is working for another Republican presidential candidate entranced by the possibilities of microtargeting – Mitt Romney. A Harvard Business School graduate who went on to head Bain Capital, Romney has made a point of adapting modern business techniques to politics, and it was in his successful 2002 campaign to be governor of Massachusetts that Gage's methods were first tried.

"'The governor believes in accountability, benchmarks and metrics,' said Beth Myers, Romney's campaign manager, explaining his interest in microtargeting. 'He believes in using data when it comes to making decisions.'"

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"The more information he has, the better he can group people into 'target clusters' with names such as 'Flag and Family Republicans' or 'Tax and Terrorism Moderates.' Once a person is defined, finding the right message from the campaign becomes fairly simple.

"'Flag and Family Republicans' might receive literature on a flag-burning amendment from its sponsor, while 'Tax and Terrorism Moderates' get an automated call from [former New York mayor] Rudy Giuliani talking about the war on terror, even if they lived right next door to one another,' Alex Lundry, the senior research director of TargetPoint -- the firm Gage founded in 2003 -- wrote recently in Winning Campaigns magazine."

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"And in a presidential primary, in which voters are far more homogenous than in a general election, can microtargeting find meaningful distinctions between groups? Gage and Romney are convinced that it can."

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"Gage said that when he pitched microtargeting to the Harvard MBAs advising Romney in his gubernatorial campaign, they were stunned that the idea had never been used in politics. 'You guys don't do this already?' they asked, according to Gage."

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"Michael Murphy, then Romney's campaign strategist, became intrigued by the high number of independent voters in Massachusetts, seeing them as the key to winning in a Democratic stronghold. He sought out Gage for help.

"'I wanted to break the independent-voter file into target segments and Alex's approach was the best way to do it, so I reached out to Alex and we, along with Tagg Romney and Alex Dunn of the Romney staff, sort of invented microtargeting in that race,' Murphy said.

"What did they find?

"That a 32-year-old white Protestant woman with two children and a retired Roman Catholic male engineer – while both independents – were driven by often contradictory issues, Murphy said. 'Some independents are more base Republican – like, some are pure fiscal [voters], some are focused on education,' he added.

"All of this seems somewhat straightforward."

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"But, he added, the key insight of political microtargeting is that, rather than simply determining whether married men are more likely than unmarried women to support a candidate, a campaign can identify segments within larger demographic groups and tailor messages down to the household level – an extraordinary amount of precision that helps turn a guessing game into a series of targeted strikes."

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"The first step in doing this is conducting a large survey of voters. By matching up their political views with detailed information about their consumer habits, a model is established that can be applied to the population as a whole.

"A campaign would then know which issues are important to an unmarried woman who subscribes to Outside magazine and is a frequent flier, and how they are different from issues important to an unmarried woman who has two grown children, uses corrective lenses and is an AARP member -- even if they are next-door neighbors."

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"What [Gage] does is as much art as science, and he never stops tinkering with his models. 'Part of the challenge is to constantly attack what you're doing and try to do it better,' he said."

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"Eighteen months ago, Gage made the trip up to Boston to meet with Myers. At a Beacon Hill restaurant, the two old friends chatted about Romney's potential as a presidential candidate and microtargeting's ability to help deliver him the GOP nomination.

"Over the next months, Gage and Myers talked from time to time about how microtargeting might best be used to make a difference in a presidential primary. One Saturday last fall, Myers, Gage and Will Feltus, a member of National Media Inc., the company that handles Romney's advertising, gathered for a final bull session.

"At issue was whether microtargeting could find meaningful – and measurable – differences in a primary electorate that was Republican to begin with and similar in its demographic and ideological traits. After hashing out the details on maps and graphs, Myers and the rest of the Romney team reached a decision. 'The question was whether you could differentiate between the eight kinds of chocolate,' she said. 'I became convinced that the power of microtargeting was enhanced by segregating a generally homogenous universe.'"

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"Gage is ... humble about his role, calling himself a 'planner.' He said, 'I have always believed in Eisenhower's observation: "In preparing for battle, I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable."'"

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