Every election brings a new set of key voters, like "Nascar dads" or "soccer moms." But while the cable news crowd chatters about "arugula-eating leftists" and "red-meat Republicans," the actual data show less obvious correlations between consumer behavior and voting intent.

Get ready for "oil-filter liberals" and "insecticide conservatives."

According to data-mining company Axciom, Little Rock, Ark., consumers who describe themselves as "very liberal" are disproportionately likely to buy branded automobile oil filters and cigarettes. The "very conservative" consumers paid more attention to home and garden products, like insecticide and septic tank cleaners.

Mindset Media, Tarrytown, N.Y., found a correlation between Republicans and truck brands like GMC and Dodge. Also, while Republicans have derided Democrats as "Volvo drivers," that stereotype is no longer true: Dems now prefer Scion, Mini and Volkswagen.

This type of "microtargeting" research came into vogue in the 2000 and 2004 election cycles to enable candidates to tailor their messages for smaller and more specific audiences.

Today, experts are less impressed at the usefulness of such data. In the Democratic Party's massive voter file database of everyone who casts a ballot, "There's some 500 cross-tabs of commercial data," said Thomas Gensemer, a managing partner at Blue State Digital, an online campaign consultancy that has worked for Barack Obama. "But what really matters is, did you vote in the last four election cycles and how did you vote?"

As presidential elections can come down to a handful of votes in a single state, every data cell seems filled with promise. For instance, the fact that Democrats are 48% more likely to use coffee houses like Starbucks than the average. That makes coffee shops a good place to sign up Obama voters, said Sarah Welch, co-founder and COO at Mindset Media.

Some of the data seems baffling. Why have Democrats abandoned Volvos for Scions? The answer, according to Welch, is that Democrats rank highly on measures of creativity and low on dogmatism. Scion is positioned as the quirky brand of the young outsider, and thus the two dovetail. Volvo, conversely, has abandoned the boxy look that was beloved by nonconformists, and thus liberals have lost enthusiasm for their cars.



Welch's database has 25,000 respondents, and the Republicans in it over-index on trucks and minivans. Obviously, she admits, there are lots of conservatives who drive sedans, but the stereotype of the right-wing SUV driver is statistically significant.

"What's great about this is to get quantitative validation of a lot of those intuitive things," Welch said. Her data is used by companies who want to know about the psyches of their most important customers, but both parties have also purchased its information, she said.

The Mindset database crushes right-wing tropes, too. Republicans are more likely to start their retirement saving much later in life, in their 50s and 60s. "That's definitely a surprise," Welch said.

Perhaps Republicans spend their savings on their kids' college fees, or maybe there's a potential wedge issue here for Democrats on Social Security. However, Welch's data only provide the facts, but don't explain them.

That, in part, describes the ho-hum reaction of operatives like BSD's Gensemer and Dan Solomon, CEO at Virilion, Washington, a Democratic public affairs consultancy. "It's much more complex than that. Those national generalizations often don't hold true at the local level," Solomon said.

Axciom product manager Ray Kraus also cautioned against over-interpretation. Axciom's database of all American households' shopping preferences is bought by both parties, who then layer it on top of their voter-file records.

While it shows some link between liberals and oil filters, and conservatives and insecticide, "The causality is not clear at all," Kraus said. "I didn't vote Republican because I became a fan of Nascar." (Kraus declined to name specific brands citing client confidentiality.)

Gensemer agrees. "It's one thing to know I drive a Mercedes. It's far more valuable for a campaign worker to know that I voted in the last five elections. That is what will have an impact on election day."