Book review - The Victory Lab by Sasha Issenberg

Politics has evolved over the last 50 years from a spray and pray approach to campaigning to a much more data and demographically driven approach. Using various measurements and statistics, political campaigns are able to use rifle shot precision to target those voters that are most likely to swing an election result with a message that will resonate.

The book discusses this approach in detail - in fact, too much detail. Some of the history - especially the early days through the 1992 campaigns - is interesting. The remaining parts of the book - taking the reader to the 2012 election - becomes redundant and bogs down in names and seemingly endless and forgettable small vignettes and names of data scientists and rehashed approaches.

There is very little actionable here for most political scientists. It is more of a history than a how-to. Probably a useful read for someone fascinated by the subject, but for the casual reader, the book gets quite dry after the first 200 pages.