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Data-driven analytics and individual profiling are increasingly driving election campaigning.

How do they get all that information? From you, whether you know it or not.

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So, when that nice canvasser comes to your door asking for your vote in the provincial election, be careful what you say.

These days, those volunteers often come kitted out with either a tablet or a smart phone so that any information that you give them is added to their party’s profile of you. The genesis of that profile is the voters’ list that for the first time this year not only provides name and address, but whether you voted in the last election.

The better-funded parties have specialty software loaded onto those handheld devices. In the last federal election, for example, the federal Liberals used a ‘get-out-the-vote’ software developed by NGPVan, a privately owned and partisan American company that only works with ‘progressive’ parties.