HOUSTON – The rallies, the protests, the debates. After more than a year of campaigning and the circus that has become the 2016 presidential election cycle, it comes down to this -- swaying those coveted undecided voters.
Voters like Houston-area mom Kimmie Longstreet.
She's married, and has a 1-year-old son named Easton.
But Longstreet has a secret. "I think there are a lot more people out there like me, but won't admit it, especially on camera," she said.
She's never voted in her life.
But that's about to change next week.
"Especially now that I have a little one, and I feel like his future is involved, I feel like it's my responsibility," said Longstreet.
Longstreet also doesn't know yet who she'll vote for.
QUIZ: Are you a Republican or a Democrat?
Because she's on the fence -- the quintessential suburban white picket fence -- candidates need her vote.
They'll fight hard for it, armed with an arsenal of very personal, very specific information.
Ken Strasma is the CEO of HaystaqDNA.
Strasma's company pioneered a high-tech way to target voters.
"It straddles the line between cool and creepy," said Strasma.
In 2008, his data-gathering technique helped President Obama win the White House.
In the old days, campaigns would cold-call voters and bombard mailboxes with junk mail. Now, modern campaigns are digging up personal details about your life and using them to persuade switchable voters.
It's called micro-targeting.
Professor Brandon Rottinghaus knows so much about micro-targeting he's teaching a course about it at the University of Houston.
He says candidates are gathering all kinds of specifics about your daily life.
"[Candidates] can buy this information from these big retail houses who collect this information based upon a lot of different things," said Rottinghaus.
Do you buy generic or brand name cereal?
Do you subscribe to cable TV?
"Are you wealthy? Are you not wealthy? What's your age range and what's the probability of that affecting your ability to go vote?" said Rottinghaus. He added,
"So these factors play into what they know about you, and how they can use that to predict whether you will go vote, and go vote for their candidate."
And of course, candidates know what you're talking about on social media.
"It's harder and harder to get survey responses on the phone on what they voted for, but they'll go on social media and tell you what they had for breakfast and about their doctor's appointment and everything else," said Strasma.
These campaigns no longer spend millions buying ad time with messages for a generic audience.
Now they gather information about you and create customized messages that are sent to your inbox or cellphone.
In the future, campaign workers won't go door to door with clipboards.
They'll have smartphones containing personal profiles, so they can cater their pitches directly to voters -- voters like Kimmie Longstreet.
“It’s a little creepy. It doesn’t surprise me,” said Longstreet. She added, “If they can use that information to get their selling points across to the voter, then that’s great.”
