Talk Business & Politics Daily: Data-driven voters and voter-driven data

On Wednesday’s Talk Business & Politics Daily, the Conway Chamber’s Jamie Gates discusses his recent analysis of voter data overlaid with consumer data. What does it tell us about the habits and characteristics of this year’s primary voters?

Gates says that of the 190,000 voters/consumers he profiled they are younger and more affluent than likely voters. So how should a politician utilize this demographic data in this analysis?

“Any serious politician now has a lot of data at their fingertips and they know everything that I just said about likely voters. But what they may not know is who are these people who are taking part in this really weird election season?” said Gates.

“They are taking it to heart and they are stepping in for the first time. And I think they need to think about who are these first time voters going to be in November – some of them are coming my way, some of them aren’t,” he added. “I think what’s most interesting is they are coming for the presidential election, that’s what drawing these people in. How do they feel about medical marijuana? How do they feel about casinos? How do they feel about the mayor’s race or some other legislative race? They may be up for grabs… It will be disruptive because there are some new people coming to the party in November and a politician would be smart to figure out who they were ahead of time.”

Also on today’s daily show, State Sen. Missy Irvin, R-Mountain View, gives a few hints of what she’ll be working on in the 2017 legislative session. It involves major changes at the Arkansas Department of Human Services.

TB&P: Tell me a little bit about what you’ve got in the can, what you are working on for the 2017 session?

Sen. Irvin: We have done a tremendous amount of work working with DCFS [Division of Children and Family Services] and DYS [Division of Youth Services], particularly in their reorganization with DHS [Department of Human Services] and lots of reforms happening. The Governor appointed a wonderful group of people that really have dug in and done a lot of work on child welfare reform and the foster care situation and our system. There’s a lot of work to be done there, so we will be bringing forward a lot of those suggestions and ideas.

Plus, a lot of the work that our advisory council that the Governor appointed – we have just done a tremendous amount of work looking at the system and figuring out where we need to restructure and then what kinds of rules and regulations or laws need to be changed to really make the system more efficient and more effective and better for the children that we serve. So that’s some of the huge things that I have been working on.

TB&P: Give me one specific piece of legislation you know you will put your name on as a sponsor in that realm.

Sen. Irvin: I think a lot of it is looking at the next of kin issues and making sure that placement is a little bit easier to provide placement with people that are next of kin and family. We’ve got to do that. We’ve got to figure out ways to attract more foster families.

And so legislation that we are working on with DHS is really trying to look at the rules and the regulations and the process and trying to lessen those regulations for that so that we can just attract more families and make it easier on them to be involved as partners with us to try to take care of our children. I think it is just one of the greatest callings that we need to do.

Another agenda thing that I am working with is city, county and local issues and working with our counties and the Nature Conservancy. We started the unpaved road program which is a wonderful program, and I will be working on that to hopefully get some more funding, match funding, with our private partnerships with the unpaved roads program.

Watch Irvin’s full interview, including her take on Arkansas vs. Florida (where her kids go to school) and Gates’ full interview on voter data in the video below.