After John Kerry lost a very winnable election in 2004, Democrats were worried that Republicans had gained an almost insurmountable lead in both technology and data analysis…

Even with all of those efforts, the right is still behind in terms of technological know-how and savvy. And technologists on the right are often the first to admit this.

Ned Ryun, the CEO of Voter Gravity, which bills itself as a center-right data-driven election tech platform, noted that culture is a big part of the problem. “The biggest challenge of the center-right is not talent or technology,” Ryun said. “Our biggest weakness is a culture where important things like data and analysis are not emphasized. As a guy who’s done grassroots campaigns in past and as a tech guy, as well, this worries me.”

Tools like Voter Gravity should help close the gap – but only if the Democrats don’t pull too far ahead with other innovations. One of the goals of Voter Gravity is to eliminate what Ryun refers to as data loss. In this case, data loss refers not to the kind of loss associated with a security breach, but to all of the information volunteers collect when they interact with voters – and then do nothing with.

This is an excerpt from “Big data wars: How technology could tip the mid-term elections” in networkworld.com. Read the full piece here.