**This article was taken from The WIRED World in 2016 --_our fourth annual trends report, a standalone magazine in which our network of expert writers and influencers predicts what's coming next. Be the first to read WIRED's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online._

In the 2012 US presidential election, Barack Obama stormed to a second term. Among the reasons for his victory: his campaign's groundbreaking use of technology -- from social media to data analytics -- to mobilise supporters. Now, with the 2016 election looming, the Republican Party is hoping to learn from its rival, with the help of entrepreneur Aaron Ginn. "We're trying to replace the notion that everyone in Silicon Valley is left-wing," says Ginn, co-founder of San Francisco-based Lincoln Labs. Formerly head of growth at StumbleUpon, he helped launch the startup in 2013 to introduce the Grand Old Party to software engineers through a nationwide series of hackathons. At the company's first annual Reboot conference in July, for example, Republican 2016 presidential hopeful Rand Paul mixed with startup founders and venture capitalists, creating apps for online voting and campaign donations between keynotes. "We had a guy who created an app that overlaid crime-reporting data with police scanner data, so when you combine the two you see areas that are being underserved. It's more of a public service," Ginn says. "For 2016, Lincoln Labs is going to focus on becoming the bridge between the tech world and the political world."

In the run-up to the 2016 election, the startup will host a series of events called Disrupting Democracy -- an opportunity for the technology community to publicly ask questions to the presidential candidates -- which kicked off with Senator Rand Paul in May 2015.

Away from his work for Lincoln Labs, Ginn is a personal political adviser to Republican candidates at state and national levels. "I can't disclose the specific campaigns I am working with until after things flush out in the primary," he says. But his strategy is clear: he uses a data-led approach to wooing voters. "In politics, the core product is the candidate. Your goal is to make people fall in love with your product faster," he says. "So we work on things like: how do we motivate people to move from a smaller to a larger donation? How do we make it easier for them to register?"

From 2016 onwards, Ginn argues, elections will increasingly be won not by trail-hardened campaign managers, but by analysts making decisions based on real-time data, such as how to personalise messages to diverse voters. "Having technology at the core of the decision-making team is the next version of the political campaign," he says.

But can tech alone stop Hillary Clinton? "You can't growth-hack a candidate who isn't working with voters," Ginn admits, conceding that the Republicans still have some way to catch up. "If we just copy what Obama did in 2012, we will lose."

Oliver Franklin-Wallis is assistant editor at WIRED and**Madhumita Venkataramanan is head of technology at Telegraph Media Group

This article was originally published by WIRED UK