Both the Obama and Romney presidential campaigns are using unprecedented access to information about voters’ personal lives to influence their voting habits, according to strategists close to each campaign who spoke with The New York Times.

Armed with information about potential voters’ web-browsing habits, financial situations, and consumer habits purchased from corporations, campaign workers are using subtle cues to train voters to visit the polls.

From The New York Times:

In the weeks before Election Day, millions of voters will hear from callers with surprisingly detailed knowledge of their lives. These callers — friends of friends or long-lost work colleagues — will identify themselves as volunteers for the campaigns or independent political groups.

The callers will be guided by scripts and call lists compiled by people — or computers — with access to details like whether voters may have visited pornography Web sites, have homes in foreclosure, are more prone to drink Michelob Ultra than Corona or have gay friends or enjoy expensive vacations.

The campaigns will be capitalizing on research that has shown when campaign callers ask potential voters about their voting routines, such as how they travel to the polls or when they usually vote, such simple questions tend to produce higher turnouts.

Professor David W. Nickerson of the University of Notre Dame spoke with The New York Times about his research of these tactics, saying, “Voting is habit-forming . . . When someone is asked to form a mental image of the act of voting, it helps trigger that habit.”

The campaigns are also reportedly using tactics described by experts as “public shaming,” demonstrated in actions like publishing to Facebook information about a person’s voting habits compared to their neighbors, or mailing fliers that embarrass someone for not voting.

Workers with the campaigns admitted to The New York Times that their aggressive use of such information could make voters, “creeped out.”  They also said other organizations have approached them about the viability of the “shaming” tactics.

“Obama can’t do it. But the ‘super PACs’ are anonymous. They don’t have to put anything on the flier to let the voter know who to blame,” said one Democratic consultant.

The campaigns are gathering all of this information on voters in a few different ways, partially through the “cookie” files left on the computers of the campaign website visitors that track their web-history, as well as through information purchased from companies that study voters’ personal lives.

From The New York Times:

While the campaigns say they do not buy data that they consider intrusive, the Democratic and Republican National Committees combined have spent at least $13 million this year on data acquisition and related services. The parties have paid companies like Acxiom, Experian or Equifax, which are currently subjects of Congressional scrutiny over privacy concerns.

The New York Times also reported that vendors working with the campaigns said they also had dealings with Rapleaf or Intelius, who have been sued over alleged privacy violations.  Such companies are also currently launching lobbying campaigns to convince consumers their practices do not harm their privacy.

The success of the campaigns’ tactics will depend on how well their subtle cues can convince “low-propensity voters,” or people who in previous elections almost didn’t vote.  Both campaigns believe close elections in the past were won largely because of these ambivalent voters.

In any case, the more aggressive use of data-mining has a number of those in the media alarmed, as the ‘Times’ report has campaign officials sounding like, “executives from retailers like Target and credit card companies like Capital One.”

You can reach Staff Reporter Shea Huffman here or follow him on Twitter.