Friday, September 12, 2008

Sophisticated voter targeting?

Mentioned in passing in an only tangentally-related article:

Both are evidence of what Canada's political parties and for-hire election campaign tacticians have known for some time: that the Conservatives are doing the most sophisticated, intense and widespread voter-targeting in the country.


I wasn't going to mention it this early on, but I've gotten two pieces of literature from the Conservative campaign so far, and they were both addressing me very specifically in my capacity as a parent.

Thing is, I'm not a parent. Not only that, but very few people in my postal code are. If they had done any demographic targeting at all, they wouldn't be sending me this stuff.

Originally I was going to comment on how I've never before gotten political propganda targeting me as something I'm not. I've gotten material targeting me as having an opinion I don't have, but always in my capacity of something that I am. I've gotten both "As a tenant, here's why you should support rent control" and "As a tenant, here's why you should oppose rent control." I've gotten "As a hard-working citizen" as a premise for nearly every political platform I've ever heard of. But I've never been targeted as something I'm not. And they consider this sophisticated voter targeting? All I can assume is that means they don't give a flying fuck about me.

1 comment:

laura k said...

"All I can assume is that means they don't give a flying fuck about me."

A safe assumption, I think.