Perfecting election campaigns with artificial Intelligence?
In the quasi two-party-system of the United Kingdom, focusing the election campaigns on possible swing voters and otherwise relying on secure vote banks, has long been practiced with good results. In some cases, it boiled down to certain streets and certain suburban clusters whenever the parties had sufficient information on the voting patterns in their constituency.
With the increasing volatility of the voting patterns, even in Britain the numbers of swing voters are increasing. Therefore, the campaign methods and instruments must be adapted. On the European continent, the volatility is much higher than in Britain, and the party systems are more and more falling apart. Political parties with faithful membership and reliable vote banks, like Social Democratic or Christian Democratic parties, are shrinking dramatically while fringe parties come and go. Certain policies, e.g. the management or mismanagement of immigration, are being seen by larger parts of the population as a threat and trigger big swings to the right, like in Denmark, Sweden, The Netherlands, France and Germany. The mainstream parties and governments, so far, have no recipe for stemming the tide and often react in panic mode by vilifying the perceived right wingers as Nazis.
In Southeast Asia, many political parties are not offering ideologies in the traditional sense but use ethnic or religious cleavages in their societies as main attraction. The fast-growing use of artificial intelligence (AI) might provide them with new sophisticated instruments to bring the votes out and maximise their voter base.
Scientific American has published an analysis of what may be possible soon. And the advances of social media and available data harvesting methods in Southeast Asia will certainly push the competing parties to try out everything what is available. The low cost of AI generated targeted campaign messages is an additional advantage, while posters and rallies are cost intensive.
The article highlights the danger as well:
“When combined with GenAI’s ability to generate customized messages, this technique places large-scale furtive manipulation within reach of bad-faith political operators or indeed foreign adversaries. Whereas previously, manual targeting at market segments required extensive funding and knowledge, the availability of GenAI has dramatically lowered the cost. Political targeting is now cheaper and easier than ever before.”
Political Party Forum Southeast Asia 