As midterms approach, political parties ramp up efforts to identify likely voters

Democrats are working to compete against a robust GOP data program that will tell the party who the likely voters are and how to get them to the polls.

In a state where Democrats dominated the 2016 election, Republican National Committee Nevada State Director Dan Coats said the organization chose Nevada as the first to ramp up for the midterm elections. This is the earliest that the organization has been on the ground, he said, adding a new training director for volunteer recruitment strategies and a new voter registration director.

“Obviously there’s been struggles in the past with the party in Nevada,” Coats said Friday, the same day the organization’s data summit gathered about 60 campaign officials and strategy experts in Las Vegas. “Since we’ve been here on the ground earlier than ever before, we’ve been able to develop these relationships with county parties, central committees (and) GOP clubs.”

RNC Data Director Kristian Hemphill said it was almost impossible for Democrats to catch up to the Republicans’ data program, a system built over two election cycles at a cost of more than $200 million and counting.

“If they were to start a modeling program that was as robust as ours, they could match us point for point into the future,” he said. “They could score every month about how voters felt about a particular issue, but they couldn’t go back and tell you how that voter felt, how that voter’s sentiment on that issue changed from September of 2017 to October of 2017 because they weren’t doing the modeling program then like we were.”

Brian Parnitzke, the RNC’S director of turnout and targeting, said the organization’s data going back to 2014 could show which voters have gravitated to or leaned away from the party, possible reasons why and potential messaging to bring them back.