Data Driven Approaches for Campaigns and

MIA and MPA Policy Skills II Core. Pre-req: Quant I. Priority Registration: MIA and MPA. We will examine the evolution and revolution in data-driven politics as practiced by leading campaigns and advocacy efforts. The course will provide an overview of key issues in public opinion polling, large-scale microtargeting, randomized controlled trial testing, the application of behavioral science and modern statistical techniques, as well as the current and emerging uses of large language models. Our primary focus will be on developments in U.S. political and advocacy campaigns, but we will also examine the international applications of these tools. The course is designed to provide an informative yet critical overview of an area where it is often difficult to separate hype from expertise. The purpose of the course is to prepare students to understand the strengths and limitations of evidence-based approaches, analytics, and current applications of artificial intelligence. The course provides concrete and practical knowledge of some of the key tools in use in campaigns and advocacy. Students will be encouraged throughout the course to view developments in political analytics as an example of how emerging techniques can be applied and misapplied in a range of organizations and efforts. Students will have opportunities to work on specific advocacy or organizational issues of their own interest, developing approaches to the use of new data and analytics tools that may be of use as they consider specific careers in a range of fields. Students will have the opportunity to design, field, and analyze their own polling questions.

Students will be required to make extensive use of current AI tools, even as those tools change during the course. The course will encourage the use of these tools to support rigorous statistical reasoning while requiring students to understand the appropriate use of methods that are now at least superficially easier to apply. It is strongly recommended that students have completed Quantitative Analysis before taking this course. The class will include outside speakers with expertise in polling, analytics, the use of AI in politics, and other areas.

Mark Steitz is a Washington, DC based communications and analytics strategist. He founded TSD Communications and co founded Catalist (large scale voter data), The Analyst Institute (evidence based voter contact), and QRS New Media (communications technology).  He served on the Advisory Board of th