Algorithmic microsegmentation model for vote capture in Ecuador

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.59169/pentaciencias.v8i4.1916

Keywords:

Algorithmic microsegmentation; political marketing; segmentation; campaigning; voting

Abstract

Algorithmic voter microsegmentation combines large-scale data processing with machine learning techniques to sort citizens into internally homogeneous collectives, moving beyond the conventional demographic approach. Objective: To build a microsegmentation model based on k-means that identifies differentiated voter profiles in Ecuador and supports vote capture. Method: A quantitative, cross-sectional and descriptive-explanatory design was adopted. The sample was set on the 2026 national electoral registry (N = 13,331,335), with 95 % confidence, 5 % error and 385 resulting surveys; the instrument reached content validity (Aiken's V = 0.95) and high overall reliability (Cronbach's alpha = 0.881). The analysis relied on k-means, z-score standardization, the elbow method and the Silhouette coefficient. Results: The algorithm sorted voters into two segments differing significantly across the six psychographic dimensions and in vote intention and participation (H = 86.851; p < 0.001): passive-conservative (59.7 %) and receptive-digital (40.3 %), with a positive moderate-strength association with vote capture (ρ = 0.561). Conclusions: The model offers an actionable input for crafting messages, choosing channels and allocating campaign resources within the ethical and legal framework of data protection; the null hypothesis is rejected and differentiated, usable electoral profiles for vote capture are confirmed.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

References

Aagaard, P., & Marthedal, R. (2023). Political microtargeting: Towards a pragmatic approach. Internet Policy Review, 12(1). https://doi.org/10.14763/2023.1.1690

Ahmed, M., Seraj, R., & Islam, S. M. S. (2020). The k-means algorithm: A comprehensive survey and performance evaluation. Electronics, 9(8), 1295. https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics9081295

Aiken, L. R. (1985). Three coefficients for analyzing the reliability and validity of ratings. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 45(1), 131–142. https://doi.org/10.1177/0013164485451012

Álvarez Mena, P. A., Mantilla Bolaños, E. D., Marín Nicolalde, J. E., & Trujillo Sarzosa, I. E. (2025). Segmentación de clientes de una empresa ecuatoriana de pulpa de fruta usando K-Means [Tesis de maestría, Universidad Internacional del Ecuador]. Repositorio Digital UIDE. https://repositorio.uide.edu.ec/handle/37000/8548

Asamblea Nacional Constituyente. (2008). Constitución de la República del Ecuador. Registro Oficial 449, 20 de octubre de 2008. https://oig.cepal.org/sites/default/files/2008_cpr_ecu.pdf

Asamblea Nacional del Ecuador. (2009, 27 de abril). Código de la Democracia (Ley Orgánica Electoral y de Organizaciones Políticas de la República del Ecuador). Registro Oficial Suplemento 578, 27 de abril de 2009. https://www.cne.gob.ec/codigo-de-la-democracia/

Banda Garza, F. (2024). Geografía electoral y modelos de comportamiento electoral: un análisis espacial del voto y su relación con las variables sociodemográficas en Nuevo León [Tesis doctoral, Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León]. LACOP UANL.

Barredo-Ibáñez, D., López-López, P. C., & de la Garza Montemayor, D. J. (2024). Social media and support for democracy in 18 Latin American countries: A comparative analysis of moderated mediation (2018–2020). Global Media and Communication, 20(1), 111–129. https://doi.org/10.1177/17427665231212144

Consejo Nacional Electoral. (2026, 2 de julio). Resolución PLE-CNE-2-2-7-2026: Registro Electoral definitivo para las Elecciones Seccionales y del CPCCS 2026. https://www.cne.gob.ec

Creswell, J. W., & Creswell, J. D. (2023). Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches (6.ª ed.). SAGE.

Dobber, T., Metoui, N., Trilling, D., Helberger, N., & de Vreese, C. H. (2021). Do (microtargeted) deepfakes have real effects on political attitudes? The International Journal of Press/Politics, 26(1), 69–91. https://doi.org/10.1177/1940161220944364

Escobar-Pérez, J., & Cuervo-Martínez, Á. (2008). Validez de contenido y juicio de expertos: Una aproximación a su utilización. Avances en Medición, 6(1), 27–36.

Ester, M., Kriegel, H.-P., Sander, J., & Xu, X. (1996). A density-based algorithm for discovering clusters in large spatial databases with noise. En Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (pp. 226–231). AAAI Press.

Freidenberg, F., & Pachano, S. (2016). El sistema político ecuatoriano. FLACSO Ecuador.

George, D., & Mallery, P. (2021). IBM SPSS Statistics 27 step by step: A simple guide and reference (17.ª ed.). Routledge.

Granda Gómez, J. M., Lema Auz, B. G., Llerena Mena, A. F., & Villarruel Cerón, W. R. (2025). Modelo híbrido de segmentación y predicción de flujo vehicular en la avenida “Las Aguas” en Guayaquil – Ecuador, utilizando K-Means y Random Forest [Tesis de maestría, Universidad Internacional del Ecuador]. Repositorio Digital UIDE. https://repositorio.uide.edu.ec/handle/37000/8543

Gray, R. M. (1984). Vector quantization. IEEE ASSP Magazine, 1(2), 4–29. https://doi.org/10.1109/MASSP.1984.1162229

Guess, A. M., Malhotra, N., Pan, J., Barberá, P., Allcott, H., Brown, T., Crespo-Tenorio, A., Dimmery, D., Freelon, D., Gentzkow, M., González-Bailón, S., Kennedy, E., Kim, Y. M., Lazer, D., Moehler, D., Nyhan, B., Rivera, C. V., Settle, J., Thomas, D. R., … Tucker, J. A. (2023). How do social media feed algorithms affect attitudes and behavior in an election campaign? Science, 381(6656), 398–404. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abp9364

Hackenburg, K., & Margetts, H. (2024). Evaluating the persuasive influence of political microtargeting with large language models. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 121(24), e2403116121. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2403116121

Hernández-Sampieri, R., & Mendoza Torres, C. P. (2018). Metodología de la investigación: Las rutas cuantitativa, cualitativa y mixta. McGraw-Hill.

Hernández Reyna, G. D. (2023). El comportamiento e influencia electoral determinante de los factores que influyen en la decisión del voto de los ciudadanos durante el periodo electoral del año 2021 al puesto de presidente municipal de Monterrey [Tesis doctoral, Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León]. Repositorio Institucional UANL. http://eprints.uanl.mx/26133/

Hidalgo Chica, A. E., & Cedeño Moreira, C. L. (2022). Comunicación política en redes sociales durante la segunda vuelta electoral de Ecuador, año 2021: Análisis del uso de la red social Facebook. ReHuSo: Revista de Ciencias Humanísticas y Sociales, 7(1), 104–115. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5825838

Horan, K., Brunsdon, C., & Domijan, K. (2024). A multilevel spatial model to investigate voting behaviour in the 2019 UK general election. Applied Spatial Analysis and Policy, 17(2), 703–727. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12061-023-09563-6

Ienca, M. (2023). On artificial intelligence and manipulation. Topoi, 42(3), 833–842. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-023-09940-3

Imik Tanyildizi, N., & Tanyildizi, H. (2022). Estimation of voting behavior in election using support vector machine, extreme learning machine and deep learning. Neural Computing and Applications, 34(20), 17329–17342. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00521-022-07395-y

Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Censos. (s.f.). Estadísticas e indicadores [Base de datos]. https://www.ecuadorencifras.gob.ec

Ikotun, A. M., Ezugwu, A. E., Abualigah, L., Abuhaija, B., & Heming, J. (2023). K-means clustering algorithms: A comprehensive review, variants analysis, and advances in the era of big data. Information Sciences, 622, 178–210. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ins.2022.11.139

Kotler, P., & Keller, K. L. (2016). Dirección de marketing (15.ª ed.). Pearson Educación.

Kruikemeier, S., Vermeer, S., Metoui, N., Dobber, T., & Zarouali, B. (2022). (Tar)getting you: The use of online political targeted messages on Facebook. Big Data & Society, 9(2). https://doi.org/10.1177/20539517221089626

Kumar, S., Rani, R., Pippal, S. K., & Agrawal, R. (2025). Customer segmentation in e-commerce: K-means vs hierarchical clustering. TELKOMNIKA (Telecommunication Computing Electronics and Control), 23(1), 119–128. https://doi.org/10.12928/telkomnika.v23i1.26384

Ley Orgánica de Protección de Datos Personales. (2021, 26 de mayo). Registro Oficial Suplemento n.º 459. https://www.gob.ec/regulaciones/ley-organica-proteccion-datos-personales-0

Lloyd, S. P. (1982). Least squares quantization in PCM. IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, 28(2), 129–137. https://doi.org/10.1109/TIT.1982.1056489

López-López, P. C., Oñate, P., & Rocha, Á. (2020). Social media mining, debate and feelings: Digital public opinion's reaction in five presidential elections in Latin America. Cluster Computing, 23(3), 1875–1886. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10586-020-03072-8

MacQueen, J. (1967). Some methods for classification and analysis of multivariate observations. En Proceedings of the Fifth Berkeley Symposium on Mathematical Statistics and Probability (Vol. 1, pp. 281–297). University of California Press.

Matthes, J., Hirsch, M., Stubenvoll, M., Binder, A., Kruikemeier, S., Lecheler, S., & Otto, L. (2022). Understanding the democratic role of perceived online political micro-targeting: Longitudinal effects on trust in democracy and political interest. Journal of Information Technology & Politics, 19(4), 435–448. https://doi.org/10.1080/19331681.2021.2016542

Matz, S. C., Kosinski, M., Nave, G., & Stillwell, D. J. (2017). Psychological targeting as an effective approach to digital mass persuasion. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 114(48), 12714–12719. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1710966114

Minihold, S., & Votta, F. (2024). Accepting exclusion: Examining the (un)intended consequences of data-driven campaigns. Media and Communication, 12, Article 8685. https://doi.org/10.17645/mac.8685

Miraftabzadeh, S. M., Colombo, C. G., Longo, M., & Foiadelli, F. (2023). K-means and alternative clustering methods in modern power systems. IEEE Access, 11, 119596–119633. https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2023.3327640

Moreno-Morán, D. X. (2025). La comunicación política en redes sociales y su impacto en la campaña electoral de los candidatos a la presidencia de la república del Ecuador. Ciencia Latina: Revista Científica Multidisciplinar, 8(6), 6747–6758. https://doi.org/10.37811/cl_rcm.v8i6.15361

Nenadić, I. (2019). Unpacking the “European approach” to tackling challenges of disinformation and political manipulation. Internet Policy Review, 8(4). https://doi.org/10.14763/2019.4.1436

Otzen, T., & Manterola, C. (2017). Técnicas de muestreo sobre una población a estudio. International Journal of Morphology, 35(1), 227–232. https://doi.org/10.4067/S0717-95022017000100037

Perafan-Lopez, J. C., Ferrer-Gregory, V. L., Nieto-Londoño, C., & Sierra-Pérez, J. (2022). Performance analysis and architecture of a clustering hybrid algorithm called FA+GA-DBSCAN using artificial datasets. Entropy, 24(7), 875. https://doi.org/10.3390/e24070875

Polit, D. F., Beck, C. T., & Owen, S. V. (2007). Is the CVI an acceptable indicator of content validity? Appraisal and recommendations. Research in Nursing & Health, 30(4), 459–467. https://doi.org/10.1002/nur.20199

Seybold, S. L. (2025). Voter deterrence campaigns and the moral-epistemic landscape of political microtargeting. Ethics and Information Technology, 27(2), Artículo 22. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10676-025-09831-8

Simchon, A., Edwards, M., & Lewandowsky, S. (2024). The persuasive effects of political microtargeting in the age of generative artificial intelligence. PNAS Nexus, 3(2), pgae035. https://doi.org/10.1093/pnasnexus/pgae035

Sinaga, K. P., & Yang, M.-S. (2020). Unsupervised k-means clustering algorithm. IEEE Access, 8, 80716–80727. https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2020.2988796

Susser, D., Roessler, B., & Nissenbaum, H. (2019). Online manipulation: Hidden influences in a digital world. Georgetown Law Technology Review, 4(1), 1–45.

Tabianan, K., Velu, S., & Ravi, T. (2022). K-means clustering approach for intelligent customer segmentation using customer purchase behavior data. Sustainability, 14(12), 7243. https://doi.org/10.3390/su14127243

Tateishi, E. (2023). The spatiotemporal socio-demography of the Tokyo capital region: A data-driven explorative approach. Review of Regional Research, 43(3), 467–519. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10037-023-00198-1

Tappin, B. M., Wittenberg, C., Hewitt, L. B., Berinsky, A. J., & Rand, D. G. (2023). Quantifying the potential persuasive returns to political microtargeting. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 120(25), e2216261120. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2216261120

Tokuda, E. K., Comin, C. H., & Costa, L. da F. (2022). Revisiting agglomerative clustering. Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, 585, 126433. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physa.2021.126433

Ward, J. H., Jr. (1963). Hierarchical grouping to optimize an objective function. Journal of the American Statistical Association, 58(301), 236–244. https://doi.org/10.1080/01621459.1963.10500845

Waggoner, P. D. (2021). Unsupervised machine learning for clustering in political and social research. Cambridge University Press. https://www.cambridge.org/core/elements/unsupervised-machine-learning-for-clustering-in-political-and-social-research/BF62D1E8F6DB3237D5CE524FBFCBA33A

Zarouali, B., Dobber, T., De Pauw, G., & de Vreese, C. (2022). Using a personality-profiling algorithm to investigate political microtargeting: Assessing the persuasion effects of personality-tailored ads on social media. Communication Research, 49(8), 1066–1091. https://doi.org/10.1177/0093650220961965

Zuloaga-Rotta, L., Borja-Rosales, R., Rodríguez Mallma, M. J., Mauricio, D., & Maculan, N. (2024). Method to forecast the presidential election results based on simulation and machine learning. Computation, 12(3), 38. https://doi.org/10.3390/computation12030038

Zuiderveen Borgesius, F. J., Möller, J., Kruikemeier, S., Ó Fathaigh, R., Irion, K., Dobber, T., Bodo, B., & de Vreese, C. H. (2018). Online political microtargeting: Promises and threats for democracy. Utrecht Law Review, 14(1), 82–96. https://doi.org/10.18352/ulr.420

Published

2026-10-20

How to Cite

Guaitoso Pilla , J. I. ., & Suárez Pérez , J. C. . (2026). Algorithmic microsegmentation model for vote capture in Ecuador . Revista Científica Arbitrada Multidisciplinaria PENTACIENCIAS - ISSN 2806-5794., 8(4), 58–83. https://doi.org/10.59169/pentaciencias.v8i4.1916

Issue

Section

Artículos originales