Tags
Big Data, Donald Trump, GOTV, Hannes Grassegger and Mikael Krogerus, Hillary Clinton, Motherboard
I’ve stumbled across an article that has given me a new insight into the reason for Donald Trump’s electoral victory. This one is different from everything else I’ve read, and while it is certainly not the sole reason for his victory, it is one that has not been much in the press. I urge you to read it as it has implications beyond understanding how DT was able to win and perhaps why no one (outside of the Trump campaign) saw it coming.
Quick background. I spent five days in 2012 in Columbus, Ohio on a get out the vote (GOTV) campaign for Pres. Obama and was astounded at the planning and sophistication of that GOTV effort. In November of 2016 went back to Ohio, Cleveland this time, for a week for a Hillary Clinton GOTV. While I felt that campaign was not quite as astounding as the one in 2012, I did feel it was useful. And everyone, myself included, thought Clinton and the Dems had a much superior ‘ground game’ than did Trump and the Repubs.
What I didn’t know, and what very few others knew, was that the Trump and a small group of his campaign staff had leapfrogged the Dems and had a much more sophisticated GOTV.
Check out this article: The Data That Turned the World Upside Down
Not only will it explain why DT was able to do what no one expected, it will also tell you much about the new world of Big Data. It’s not a short article, but it certainly was an eye opener for me.
See what you think.
Carrie said:
Interesting article. Scary in many ways but also fascinating. It does seem like people are predictable until they suddenly are not. It seems to me that advertisers of products have always done this kind of surveying.
Diane Kupelian said:
Wow. This is a subtle and powerful weapon. This goes waaaaay beyond any typical advertising campaign. This uses detailed personal information for each individual person and uses this to manipulate each person.
I find this disturbing.
Anon-2 said:
This is fascinating, but not news for those in marketing. Soon Target and other retailers will have facial recognition software that will send you a coupon on your smartphone when you walk in the door for things they think you’ll buy based on your social media profile.
It’s the world we live in.
I’m quite sure the Democrats were using a similar system.
The sooner the democrats realize (and they are a long way from that…) that they basically nominated the one person who could lose to this buffoon….(apologies for the harsh language for the President….), the better off they’d be. According to NPR, 5 counties nationwide that voted for Romney in 2012 flipped to Clinton….but several hundred counties that voted for Obama flipped to Trump. OH, WI and PA went blue in every election since 92, but all flipped. HRC’s clue should have been that Bernie beat her in 2 of the three primaries in those states.
As I’ve said all along….people wanted the table flipped over, and it looks like they got the man for the job…..
Richard said:
Thanks to all of you who commented, either above or in emails to me. This post generally brought two types of response: those for whom this profiling came as something upsetting and those who question whether or not Cambridge Associates and the Trump campaign should be credited with the ‘sophistication’ and impact I suggested.
I suspect we all know to some degree that information on us is being gathered thru social media and other means. This “marketing on steroids” is something that is giving pause to many of us, but it’s here, and the implications go beyond selling us products (or candidates). Government has access to similar information, and many of us are ‘cooperating’ in allowing information to be gathered, whether we want it or realize it or not.
As for how much impact Cambridge Associates had or how much they were responsible for Trump’s electoral victory is not only what interested me. Whether CA helped drive undecided voters to Trump and/or away from Clinton, I believe the Trump campaign used some form of Big Data quite effectively and to their advantage, much more so than the media, the Clinton campaign, and the Democrats realized. Perhaps it’s a new or different kind of GOTV campaign, or maybe its just ‘marketing on steroids.’