How does a political party use a punter's private pleasure in cage fighting to win an election?

Ask Patrick Gorman, one-time acolyte of Kevin Rudd and modern practitioner of the political dark arts.

As state secretary of WA Labor, he oversaw Mark McGowan's dethroning of long-time Liberal premier Colin Barnett earlier this year.

Sure, Mr McGowan started two furlongs ahead in a race against a premier who'd long have been taken to the knackers' yard by colleagues if there'd been a credible Liberal alternative, but Mr Gorman wasn't taking any chances with his nag.

As part of its "micro campaign" ahead of the March 11 election, Labor targeted people who "liked" Perth-based man mountain Soa "The Hulk" Palelei on Facebook.

Fans of Soa 'The Hulk' Palelei were specifically targeted on Facebook. ( Facebook: Soa 'The Hulk' Palelei )

It reasoned that these people would have an interest in Ultimate Fighting Championship, a brutal mixed martial arts that began commercial life banning only eye-gouging and biting.

WA Labor paid Facebook to target Palelei's fans with targeted advertisements, informing them that Labor promised to overturn a ban on cage fighting, should it win the election.

Mr Gorman boasted to a social media industry gathering in April: "We could target our policy on that to people based on their liking of ultimate fighting, Soa the Hulk or other mixed martial arts players and it didn't get to any of the rest of you in the room."

A single jingle doesn't win elections anymore

Welcome to modern political combat where data is the lethal ammunition.

Long gone is the time when a catchy "It's time" jingle will be expected to ensnare an entire nation in its trance.

Facebook is now the new battleground for political parties and their microcampaigns. ( Loic Venance: AFP )

Even Kevin 07, the last successful Australian political mass movement, would've had to adjust its monaural political pitch to the new environment.

The evil genius of Patrick Gorman's hydra-headed political strategy didn't go unnoticed by his competitors.

When Andrew Bragg, the former acting federal director of the Liberal Party, talked to 7.30 this week about the same sex marriage postal survey, he singled out WA Labor's tactical play for UFC fans as an example for his side of politics.

"The only people who saw that (Facebook ad) were people who liked UFC fighting and no-one else," Mr Bragg said. "That is a type of micro campaigning that is now, not the future. Everyone's got to be there.

"Its hundreds of micro campaigns within your framework that will appeal to different people in different ways. We now know more about people than we ever have and we have to utilise that in any way we can."

Mr Bragg, who is running the "Libs & Nats for Yes" campaign in support of legalising gay marriage, told 7.30 that the political right and the business community had been slow to adapt to the new campaign landscape.

Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume. Watch Duration: 6 minutes 29 seconds 6 m Young voters mobilise to have their say on same sex marriage ( Andrew Probyn )

Unions, environmentalists and activist groups like GetUp! had invested heavily in big data to allow "direct to punter relationships", he said.

"If you go to the numbers, 70 per cent of people today use Facebook at least once a day — that's across the country, it's pretty deep penetration," he said.

"You will see GetUp! and you will see unions … using Facebook directly to speak about policies, about why taxes should be higher, they'll talk about why Adani [coalmine] shouldn't go ahead, they'll talk about why the ABCC shouldn't be brought back … and I just don't think that the arguments are countered by the other side."

Social media activism a double-edged sword

The political clout of activist groups on social media unnerves both sides of politics, albeit by different degrees.

There is fear in the Coalition that it is being outfoxed by Bill Shorten's targeting of Millennials. ( ABC: Jed Cooper )

While Labor might fret that GetUp!, for example, serves to funnel votes to the Greens, the Liberals know they won't benefit at all from a left campaign.

And while Mr Bragg is undoubtedly correct in urging the centre-right to get more active in data mining and analytics, it seems doubtful that a counter-campaign on penalty rates, slashing taxes for big corporates or the ABCC would engender groundswell movements.

But the Coalition's fear and frustration that it is being outfoxed by Labor's broad inequality agenda and Bill Shorten's calculated pursuit of left-leaning millennials is showing.

Finance Minister Mathias Cormann's Sydney Institute speech mid-week was a case in point. It was a furious, bitter take-down of the Labor leader.

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Senator Cormann said Mr Shorten's "dangerously wrong" and deliberate flirtation with the playbook of Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn ignored the historic failures of socialism and risked trashing the Hawke-Keating economic legacy.

"Pursuing the socialist ideal of equality of outcome leads to mediocrity and stagnation," he said.

Mr Shorten has expertly ridden on the back of generational grievances about housing affordability, university fees and stagnant wage growth. This much of the Cormann thesis is true.

So too was his assertion that intergenerational equity required the paying down of debt.

But until the Coalition can deliver its rebuttals as dexterously as the data-driven political landscape now requires, it will likely lose the contest, however virtuous the argument.