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Cambridge Analytica CEO suspended – and that's not even the worst news for them today

Flocke Kroes Silver badge

Hillary's team had excellent third generation get-out-the-vote software inherited from Obama and improved during 2012-2016. Such software is worth about 5% of the vote so it is only deployed in marginal states. Basically, volunteers get a list of people to call and remind that it is election day. The Republicans attempted something similar in 2012 but the software was utter crap. The polling for the 2016 election was off by about 6%, so in the last days of the election Hillary deployed her resources in the wrong states.

Mercer's software came as a surprise to everyone. It included an effective GOTV component, plus adverts individually targeted to persuadable people in marginal states so they would vote Trump (to drain the swamp, keep the Mexicans out, because Hillary is the devil or be so corrupt that the federal government would destroy itself) or stay at home because Bernie wasn't nominated.

I think is says something about a company when Julian Assange's ethics prevented a deal.

[For those of you thinking targeted ads are useless, Mercer and Google have very different goals. Mercer wants to quietly persuade just enough people swing an election. Google ads are to drain the advertising budget of their clients.]

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