Modeled voter behavior allows companies to target advertisements that Resonate with their audiences

Many political operatives, analysts, journalists and pollsters alike were proven terribly mistaken on November 8th, 2016. Hillary Clinton was leading in polls and predicted to be the 45th President of the United States before votes were even counted — the results ended up depending on a few select swing states that gave Donald Trump the victory; but most already understand this part of the narrative.

The part of the story that is often left out or conveniently forgotten is the select few individuals that did know what the results were going to be. Among them was Resonate, a data modeling company that combines first-party research, analysis and data science to model voters and their behavior. They were 94% correct about the results of election night, while traditional polling companies got it terribly wrong.

With their voter behavior research, Resonate’s mission remains to understand all voters and the reasons why they support specific candidates and causes. From here, they are able to sell this valuable information to organizations to target specific advertisements to voters.

While they are among the leaders of proprietary and comprehensive primary voter research, Resonate is also unique in its Artificial Intelligence solutions, which constantly observes and learns more about voters. To simplify an extraordinarily advanced and complex platform: Resonate purchases research data, plants cookies and models voter behavior.

Broken down further, an individual is chosen at random to participate in a survey asking a range of questions about various topics. At the beginning, they agree for a cookie to be placed on their computer, which is to say that they agree for their online use to be tracked. Their demographic information is also collected in this process. Resonate purchases this information from a third-party research data provider to then create their own conclusions.

This is where their work begins. After having initial information and a cookie placed on an individual, they can track their online behavior and form inferences about them based on the sites they visit and spend time on. From here, combinations of specific attributes such as their religion and values, candidate platform support (their stances on healthcare or taxes) and voter issues (gun control or immigration) are associated with the individuals.

Platforms with such advanced capabilities hardly make mistakes. They understand things about individuals that traditional pollsters or researchers simply cannot. With such capabilities, Resonate was able to model how voters would respond to the Access Hollywood tape of Donald Trump and the effects of Hillary Clinton’s private email server in the long run.

Their abilities proved their validity and their success in the 2016 election. But they were just beginning to grow. The relationship between artificial intelligence and politics is a new one, but is one that is clearly effective. Its full potential in the world of politics and advocacy is still yet to be fully understood or leveraged.

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