David Brooks adds his view on the expanding use of big data in politics — in this instance, in campaigning.  A particularly cogent section:

Data-driven politics assumes that demography is destiny, that the electorate is not best seen as a group of free-thinking citizens but as a collection of demographic slices. This method assumes that mobilization is more important than persuasion; that it is more important to target your likely supporters than to try to reframe debates or persuade the whole country.

His full commentary appears today in The New York Times.