How A.I. Is Making It Easier Than Ever to Microtarget Voters

In a competitive election, going big is not the only way to get a point across.A short, visceral text message directed at a small group of voters in a battleground state can be more influential (and harder to correct if the content is untrue) than a slickly produced attack ad airing nationwide, elections experts said.And now, this practice — known as microtargeting — is cheaper and easier to pull off, from content creation to distribution, thanks to artificial intelligence.Politicians are already using A.I.-powered apps to sift through government census data, commodity prices and voting data from local communities to learn about constituents’ education and employment, according to political experts.

The technology can quickly produce videos that go viral, voter outreach texts and personalized ads delivered with exacting aim, and multiple companies now offer A.I.voter targeting services.Those are messaging “missiles,” said Scott Goodstein, who helped run online operations for Barack Obama’s first presidential campaign.

In today’s information environment, precise, small-scale communiqués can be especially powerful, he said.“I no longer have to stand in a church parking lot with a flier saying ‘Vote Wednesday,’ when I can literally send out a digital message to a matched voter file saying ‘Vote Wednesday’ or ‘The vote is off’ or ‘Reply to this and your vote will count,’” said Mr.Goodstein, the chief executive of Catalyst Campaigns, a strategic communications firm.Mr.

Obama’s team turned data analytics into a pillar of success for his 2008 presidential campaign.Since then, the practice has remained little changed, according to elections experts.

Before A.I.began reshaping how campaigns could be executed, research was mixed on whether microtargeting translated into an increase in actual votes.

In 2023, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that political ads were difficult to microtarget at scale and that...