Replication Data for: The Opportunities and Limits of Microtargeting Cross-Pressured Voters

Technological advancements have ushered in the promise of targeting potentially persuadable voters with personalized messages. One class of persuadable voters are those who are cross-pressured: they identify with one party but agree with policy positions of another. For political campaigns, targeting cross-pressured voters usually involves working with commercial vendors to infer voters’ party identity and policy positions. The effectiveness of microtargeted messages thus depends on the accuracy of those predictions. We analyze the accuracy of a leading US commercial vendor’s predicted policy positions using an original 2017 survey (N = 397) asking voters their actual positions on 20 issues. We find a strong negative relationship between cross-pressure and predictive accuracy, at both the issue- and individual-level. Issues on which voters are cross-pressured are predicted with less accuracy. And the percentage of correct inferences about a voter’s positions decreases the more cross-pressured they are. While persuadable voters are a valuable target, reaching them is complicated by the difficulty in predicting their party-atypical stances.技术进步为通过个性化竞选信息定向触达潜在可说服选民带来了可期的应用前景。一类可说服选民即为跨压选民（cross-pressured voters）：他们认同某一政党的身份归属，却赞同另一政党的政策立场。对于政治竞选活动而言，定向触达跨压选民通常需要与商业数据服务商合作，以推断选民的政党身份与政策立场。因此，微定向竞选信息的投放效果取决于上述预测的准确性。本研究依托一项原创性2017年调查（有效样本量N=397），该调查询问了选民在20项政策议题上的真实立场，以此分析美国头部商业数据服务商所预测的选民政策立场的准确性。研究发现，无论是在议题层面还是个体层面，选民的跨压程度与预测准确性之间均存在显著负相关关系：选民存在跨压情况的政策议题，其立场预测的准确性更低；且选民的跨压程度越高，对其政策立场的正确推断占比也就越低。尽管可说服选民是极具价值的定向投放目标，但由于难以预测他们所持有的与政党身份不符的非典型立场，触达这类选民的工作变得更为复杂。