“More money, experience, and coordination” in 2020 for Individual-1 could be no different than in 2016, except the traces of “collusive” external influence could be harder for the IC to track. And why would the Trump campaign brag about its operations at a conference in Romania.
During the primary, Parscale operated Trump’s digital marketing strategy by himself “on the couch” of his San Antonio home. But that changed substantially when his boss secured the GOP nomination. And so did the campaign’s approach to voter targeting. The Trump team gained access to the Republican National Committee’s Data Trust, a collection of more than 200 million voter files gathered through a massive operation begun in the wake of Romney’s 2012 Presidential defeat. It was like a “Christmas present”, Parscale remembers. The team now had a way to “know what Americans think”. But Parscale and his team still needed an efficient way to target them. “And this other Christmas present showed up: these guys from Facebook walked to my office and said: ‘we have a beta … it’s a new onboarding tool … you can onboard audiences straight into Facebook and we will match them to their Facebook accounts’”. The tool had 97-98% match rates, Parscale told a riveted audience at the Romanian Academy of Sciences. This allowed Trump’s team to revolutionize the use of micro-targeting in the 2016 campaign.
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Voter prospecting is “the second big thing in terms of 2020 that’s going to change American politics”, Parscale said. “Think if I had the email address and phone number of every single person who could vote for Donald Trump before the election”. The campaign is spending $2 million a month doing exactly that, Parscale shared during the conference. Back in 2015, “the most people [the Republican National Committee] could contact to show up [to vote] without using television, advertising or some kind of mass media was 2 million people”. By 2020, “we’re gonna have 50-60 million. That’s a change in mentality”, Parscale emphasized. Why is this so important? “In United States for election you only need about 62 million people”. So, around the election, the Republicans will use this massive database to message and call their prospective voters to say: “it’s time for you to show up and vote for what you already saw”. And “that’s a gigantic advantage, because the democrats can’t do that”,
www.forbes.com/...
Or so they say.
(2017)
Cambridge Analytica harvested data on 50 million US Facebook users,
Cambridge worked both for the Trump campaign and a Trump-aligned Super PAC. In June 2016, Cambridge sent three staffers, led by chief product officer Matt Oczkowski, to the campaign’s San Antonio office. Oczkowski’s team eventually grew to 13 people, working under Trump digital director Brad Parscale and alongside his staff and outside consultants. According to Parscale, the Cambridge staff provided useful analysis of data about the American electorate. They did not, however, provide the raw data—things like demographic information, contact information, and data about how voters feel about different issues—on which that analysis was done.
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Based on these surveys, RNC data, data the Trump team collected itself, and commercially available information from data brokers, Oczkowski’s team developed a heat map of the country to pinpoint where Trump should visit to maximize his impact on potentially persuadable voters.
[...]
What’s also clear, however, is that the Trump campaign seems to have ample motivation to distance itself from Cambridge, a firm whose tactics have sometimes raised questions. Adding to the intrigue is the fact that shadowy billionaire and Trump supporter Robert Mercer is Cambridge’s main financial backer. Former Trump campaign manager and chief strategist to President Trump, Steve Bannon, also held a position on Cambridge's board. The company itself is an offshoot of the British firm, SCL, which has roots in government and military operations.
www.wired.com/...
Or so they say, even if in 2016 external off-shore influence operations had access to perhaps the same data. There are a lot of cover stories, even one claiming that Jared Kushner was the 2016 mastermind, and even if Robert Mercer paid for some of the 2016 victory.
This time, for 2020, the GOP’s official fundraising operation is now at risk at being co-opted by the Trump campaign.
WASHINGTON — The Republican Party’s efforts to build a small-dollar donation machine to keep up with the Democrats has hit a wall: a deep mistrust of President Trump and his campaign among Republican operatives.
Republican brass are crafting a new online fundraising tool to match the Democrats’ small-dollar fundraising juggernaut that helped carry them to victory in the 2018 midterm elections. But some GOP operatives who would be the ones to purchase the tool don’t want Trump and his family raiding their campaign lists for their own benefit, said campaign consultants reached by Yahoo News.
“They’re scared of adopting it. Imagine Trump owning our data — handing everything over to that guy, the guy who f****s with everybody, who has destroyed our party,” said a senior consultant for a conservative political group with national clients.
Republicans involved with the effort say there are no delays and everything is moving smoothly, and dismissed concerns about Trump stealing data as sour grapes from consultants who will lose money because they didn’t win the work on the project, now known as WINRED.
www.yahoo.com/...