Dommett, Katharine, Glenn Kefford and Simon Kruschinski. 2024. Data-driven campaigning and political parties—Five advanced democracies compared

When looking at media coverage and the public discourse it seems as if all election campaigns nowadays are highly data-driven, with political parties being able to individually target voters in order to mobilize or persuade them.In their book, Katharine Dommett, Glenn Kefford and Simon Kruschinski set out to paint a more differentiated picture of data-driven campaigning (DDC) by looking not only into to the so-far dominant case of the USA, but by comparing five advanced democracies: the USA, the UK, Australia, Canada and Germany.They aim to "demystify the practice of DDC, looking beyond the hyperbolic claims and sales pitches to examine how DDC is employed by political parties" and succeed in showing that "not only [...] DDC is by no means uniform, but also that data can be collected, analyzed and deployed in different ways" (p.191).One of the many strengths of the book is its clear structure: The authors start with an introduction (Chap.1) before presenting their theoretical framework (Chap.2).Within this theoretical framework and the analysis built upon it lies the biggest contribution of this book.Building upon an understanding that DDC can come in many different forms and can be used to promote different goals, they divide DDC into four components, namely data, analytics, technology, and personnel.Subsequently, while expanding upon existing research, the authors identify variables that influence these four components on different analytical levels: the party, regulatory, and system level.The following chapters focus on describing the variation found in each of the four DDC components within the five countries, starting with data in chapter three.