Donald Trump and his team have upped their game to win the race for the White House by hiring the company that got the Brexit message to millions, resulting in the split of Great Britain from the European Union.
Cambridge Analytica is a marketing film that targets voters (and potential donors) based on their unconscious psychological biases.
The strategic communications company also worked with former GOP candidates Ted Cruz, Ben Carson and the “Leave.EU” campaign in the United Kingdom. According to the Daily Beast, Cambridge Analytica “went after first-time voters and those who felt left out of the political process, the kinds of people that Trump was successful bringing to the polls in primary elections.”
The move toward a data-driven campaign — an idea that Trump labeled as “overrated” as recently as May — is another about-face for Trump’s campaign. It comes after Trump reversed himself by endorsing Speaker of the House Paul Ryan on Friday after hinting that he wouldn’t.
As of December 2015, Cambridge Analytica collected about 5,000 data points on over 220 million Americans that were originally used during Cruz’s campaign — which according to The Guardian coat $6.7 million.
The London-based company set up approximately ten data scientists within Giles-Parscale, the Texas-based firm that runs Trump’s website. The cost was about $1.6 million.