In chapter 2 of business Driven Info Systems, a really interesting topic was discussed about how individuals are grouped into different kinds of voting tribes. The different voting tribes are typically not distinguished by: income bracket, race, or religion. The different voting tribes are more defined by the issues of: God, community values, responsibility distribution of different people in society, and the different share of opportunity different people are granted in a society. Spotlight Analysis is a democratic consulting agency that has come up with the idea of the different voting tribes. Spotlight Analysis has come up with ten different tribes.
The main tribe that was discussed in the book was the “Barn Raisers” tribe. The people who are grouped in this voting tribe are less likely to have obtained a college degree than some of the other tribes. They are concerned about staying active in the community they live in, and are very concerned about people in society playing by the rules in general.
In 2004, 90 percent of the people who had been designated to the “Barn Raisers” voting tribe had voted for President George Bush. Interestingly enough, by 2006, 64 percent of this voting tribe had changed their political leanings towards democratic candidates for the congressional election of that year. The analysis done with this voting tribe described that the people in this group were disappointed with the events that happened under the Republican leadership such as: Republican Political scandals, tax payer funded catastrophes like the Alaskan “Bridge to Nowhere”, the poorly managed Hurricane Katrina relief effort, and the ineffective Bush tax cuts.
The old way of evaluating and placing certain individuals into market segments was ineffective. People were placed into very large groups such as: Hispanics, Catholics, hunters, soccer moms, etc. These market segments were too broad and did not properly evaluate the ways that these groups voted. The new way of evaluating market segments by the 10 different voting tribes, proved to be helpful in the election of Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential election.
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