It was Mr. Bennett who was talking about the general data protection regulations in his presentation. I talked about algorithmic data analysis in my presentation.
As I explained, the parties collect data from various sources. The aggregate data is entered into a data base and then run through algorithmic processes, statistical analysis for social sciences, and logistic regressions. The co-occurence of a certain number of socio-demographic and political characteristics are identified in order to create voter profiles.
We determine the connections between these various voter profiles and those who traditionally vote for the party. The data base provides the parties wtih information on their own voters. That helps them to determine the profiles that line up most with their voters from a socio-political perspective, and then choose the voter who might potentially vote for them if the party puts forward certain policies.
The algorithms are there to process a disparate volume of data and give them meaning in order, in fact, to make it possible to profile voters. Essentially, that is now the focus of the digital strategists, software engineers, or computer scientists who work for political parties.