Mapping public attitudes toward the regulation of data-driven campaigning across five democracies

Introduction: After a number of high-profile scandals, there have been heightened focus on the way political organizations such as political parties use data and technology as part of their election campaigning activities. This has been reflected not only in the scholarly literature, and in popular commentary in the media but, most importantly, policymakers across the democratic world have increasingly been devising legislation and regulation to offset perceived harms and to limit perceived problematic practice. In this article, we contribute to the burgeoning literature which seeks to understand how democratic citizens cross-nationally perceive data-driven campaign practices.

Methods: Drawing on original survey data, we show how respondents (n = 5040) from five advanced democracies (Australia, the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and Germany), perceive data-driven campaigning, and whether various regulatory responses should be imposed, using descriptive data and linear models.

Results: We demonstrate that there is considerable unease with some of the practices now commonplace in the campaigning practices of political parties, although attitudes toward the regulation of DDC differs between countries and citizens. In particular we show that respondents from Germany are distinctive in both their opposition to data-driven practices, but also in their opposition to the regulation of political parties.

Discussion: These findings point to the need for regulation to be tailored to national contexts and for organizations such as political parties that use these practices to better communicate with citizens why and how they use these practices.