Can the GOP overcome the Democrats' magic election bullet?

With the midterm election just around the corner, using polls to predict who will win has become sport for media pundits. One problem with pre-election polls is they often include people who don’t actually vote when an election comes. In the 2010 midterm election, less than half of eligible voters turned out. In 2012, the most recent presidential election year, only about 60 percent of those who were eligible to vote did so.

In recent years, both major political parties have been using computer-database technology to identify and motivate voters who might not otherwise show up, but Democrats have the advantage in this area. I spoke with attorney and columnist J. Christian Adams from the Election Law Center in Washington, D.C., about how the Democrats have leveraged technology into wins at the polls.

You’ve written that the key reason the GOP came up short in 2012 is something called Catalist, a technology tool used by Democrats. Explain what it is. Catalist is a database that has a massive amount of incoming information—probably bigger than any other database that exists in the country because it aggregates all the other important databases, such as Planned Parenthood or the SEIU. They keep data about their members—not just their names and addresses, but actually what the members do, what they’re interested in, how engaged they are. All of that information … creates a portrait of every American, including you. … It allows customers to purchase data, usually political data, to mobilize a vote in any election. …. It can produce lists that stagger the imagination, that nobody in history has been able to produce.

In a column about Catalist that you wrote for PJ Media, you said Catalist allows Democrats and the institutional left “virtually to ignore moderates yet still win elections.” How can that be when for years we’ve been told that the key to winning is to win the moderate vote? Because everything’s changed. The Internet and data tools and analytics flipped the script. … Folks on the left, who are naturally inclined to agree with a leftist, many of them weren’t ever voting. Many of them were slumbering. Many of them weren’t engaged. What Catalist gives the Democrats the tools to do is identify those people on the far left who aren’t engaged or marginally engaged and figure out what matters to them. Is it getting food benefits? Is it a racial issue? Is it something motivating them that might not have been understood before, based on these consumer profiles? Catalist allows them to drive deeper into that left-wing base than they’ve ever been able to drive before. And you know what? It’s cheaper. If somebody already agrees with you, all you have to do is get them to the polls. Contrast that with moderates and independents, people who like to think about issues and pride themselves on making up their minds after careful analysis. Those people cost more money to persuade.

The Republican Party has mounted its own data-science approach for the midterms that are just a few weeks away. Do you think it’ll work? Is it a match for Catalist? It’s not even close. … They deserve credit for trying, but the problem is, they’re years behind in getting started. Conservative groups have a bigger problem. It’s the culture. They’re not collaborative like the left. The power of Catalist is that scores and scores of organizations which normally would compete with each other are pumping data into Catalist because they’re crusaders. They’re messianic folks who want to change the country. On the Republican side, you have competing consultants. You have three or four different versions of attempts at Catalist [by] people who are in competition with each other to sell their product to campaigns. You don’t have the centralization on the right that you do on the left. So, you know, more power to the Republican party for trying. Until the culture changes and until there’s collaboration, they’re never going to catch up.

Let me ask a non-political question. Do you find all this amassing of data by political parties to be a bit creepy? I think many Americans would just as soon not be in anyone’s database. Well, then those Americans need to find a time machine, because this is inevitable. What I find to be more creepy, and, frankly, a lot of your listeners will understand the dynamics of this—we are increasing and speeding up the process of making stark divisions between worldviews in America. … Catalist is … this internet tool, this technological tool that pushes people apart into divided camps. These groups have developed a tool to totally isolate themselves politically and aggressively from people on the other side of the aisle. I think that’s the more frightening phenomenon. We’re entering an age where the contrast between one half and the other is growing so stark and unbridgeable. This is a tool that divides America. It is not a tool that creates any sort of unity.

Listen to Joseph Slife interview J. Christian Adams on The World and Everything in It: