RNC calls for Republicans to beef up data and digital operations

After suffering a tough loss in the 2012 presidential election, the Republican National Committee (RNC) says the party must close the digital divide between the GOP and Democrats if it wants to win the upcoming midterm elections and 2016 presidential race.

As part of this effort, the RNC is looking to hire a chief technology and digital officer by May 1 who will be responsible for recruiting a team of savvy data scientists, tech and digital advocates that will build a new data and digital operation for the upcoming contests.

The recommendation was one of many included in a sweeping 100-page report released by the RNC on Monday, which reviews the party's missteps during the 2012 election. The report is the first stage of the RNC's Growth and Opportunity Project dedicated to broadening the party's base by micro-targeting its community outreach and tweaking its messaging so it better appeals to young voters, minorities and other groups it struggled to reach in 2012.

The report says President Obama's campaign was able to modify its messaging in real time to voters through its "relative seamless integration of digital, tech and data" and regular performance testing of voter outreach efforts. The RNC contends the party faces a cultural challenge rather than a technology problem, and needs to build a campaign environment that doesn't treat digital efforts as an afterthought.

Digital "has to be embedded in every function and backed up with appropriate staffing and funding," the report says.

The report recommends building up a tech and digital team that can be deployed across various divisions of the RNC, such as fundraising and communications, as well as develop an in-house staff training program for new digital recruits.

Republicans should launch a training institute, fellowship program and hold "Digital Campaign Colleges" events in San Francisco, Austin and other tech hubs in the U.S. to identify fresh talent and help hone their skills. The report also calls for the party to develop a set of "political technology" tools that can used for voter registration, absentee ballot requests and other functions. 

The key for Republicans to win elections is to become more "data-driven" and work on translating that trove of data into votes on Election Day, the report says. That includes doing a better job of integrating various buckets of data—including voter and fundraising data—to help understand voter habits and behavior, particularly with respect to voter groups that Republicans struggled to win support from in the November election, such as women, minorities and young voters.

To this end, the RNC recommends that strategists and funders build a "data analytics institute" dedicated to creating best practices for communication and outreach to specific voter groups. The institute will work with pollsters, data managers and messaging experts to develop a set of tests aimed at measuring the performance of the party's voter registration, persuasion and get out the vote efforts.

"The president’s campaign significantly changed the makeup of the national electorate and identified, persuaded, and turned out low-propensity voters by unleashing a barrage of human and technological resources previously unseen in a presidential contest," the RNC document reads. "Marrying grassroots politics with technology and analytics, they successfully contacted, persuaded and turned out their margin of victory."

Among its other recommendations, the RNC calls for the party to create a new data platform that can be accessed by other Republican organizations, as well as launch a recruitment effort aimed at attracting a team of data-focused staffers. The team of data experts will help assist the party in election races in all 50 states.

Additionally, the RNC said it will review the partnership it secured last year with Data Trust, which manages its voter file, to see if it is capable of "rising to the new data challenges we face." If it fails that test, the party will find other partners to oversee its voter file, the report said.

The report gives credit to the Democrats' early investment in data and notes that it's time for the GOP to start focusing more resources into this area.

"The commitment of Democrats to make significant investment in data and data platforms extends back eight years to the 2004 cycle," the report says. "This effort is expensive and labor-intensive, but we must make this a priority in order to be competitive on data going forward."

In a nod to Silicon Valley, the RNC tweeted on Monday that it will set up a satellite office in San Francisco and RNC Chairman Reince Preibus will host hackathons in "tech-savvy cities."

The GOP is also partnering with Silicon Valley investors to develop a data platform focused on targeting voters and donors, which is backed by Republican strategist Karl Rove, The Wall Street Journal reported. 

—  This post was updated at 2:28 p.m.

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