How Trump let himself get out-organized
For months, Donald Trump’s allies urged him to invest in the technology necessary to identify and mobilize his supporters, sources close to Trump’s campaign told POLITICO, but the billionaire barely budged, apparently believing his star power would provide a new way to mobilize voters.
By the time his campaign began investing in voter data and targeting analytics, his rivals for the GOP nomination — particularly Iowa winner Ted Cruz and third-place finisher Marco Rubio — had spent millions building sophisticated voter-targeting machines.
.. At one point early in the campaign, Trump representatives talked to Cambridge Analytica ― the firm now being credited with engineering Cruz’s cutting-edge targeting operation ― about retaining the company’s services, but they decided it was too expensive.
..Through the end of last year, the period covered by the most recent Federal Election Commission filings, Trump’s campaign had spent only about $560,000 on data-related costs, compared with at least $3.6 million for Cruz.
.. The campaign’s lackadaisical data effort is seen in some quarters as coming down to Trump’s lack of willingness to use his own cash on something that’s seen as essential in modern-day presidential politics.
.. “We didn’t have much of a ground game because I didn’t think I was going to be winning and you know, etc. etc.,” he said. “That’s why I’m so honored to have come in second.”
.. The company, which is owned by one of Cruz’s biggest donors, worked with both the campaign and a network of linked super PACs to identify Cruz supporters and persuadable voters using what it called “psychographic” profiles culled from social media, and commercial and political data.
.. The team divided the undecided voters ― who were heavily evangelical and 91 percent male ― into more than 150 different subgroups based off ideology, religion and personality type, Wilson said. It used Facebook experiments to determine which issues jazzed up their voters the most.