To jump off Garance's post, I've been pretty out-front about the awfulness of Mark Penn's Microtrends, but I'm fairly sure it's not a good guide to how the campaign is running their GOTV strategy. Penn's micro-slicing tends to rely on carving the electorate up into various subgroups, picking the one that most closely accords with his ideology, and then proclaiming them the crucial 2% who all politicians have to appeal to (thus helpfully forcing said politicians to espouse Penn's ideology). It's more of a politician-targeting stratagem than a voter-targeting stratagem. It is, in any case, not a GOTV strategy, and Penn's microtrends weren't sold, even in the book, as political forces. "Ardent Amazons" will not decide this election. Microtargeting, on the other hand, is great stuff, and totally unobjectionable. It allows you to concentrate scarce dollars on voters most likely to turn out for you, creating more sophisticated GOTV efforts than simply flooding a demographically sympathetic (read: minority or poor) area with volunteers. All the campaigns will, I imagine, be using those techniques, as well they should. --Ezra Klein
