Trump’s questioning of value of data worries Republicans

Associated Press

ATLANTA

Donald Trump says he plans to win the White House largely on the strength of his personality, not by leaning heavily on complex voter data operations that have become a behind-the-scenes staple in modern presidential campaigns.

Shortly after Trump explained his approach in an Associated Press interview – data is “overrated,” he said – one of the presumptive Republican nominee’s top advisers tried to clarify the remarks. Rick Wiley told AP the Trump campaign will indeed tap the Republican Party’s massive cache of voter information.

The national Republican Party has spent massive sums of money to develop the database since President Barack Obama’s election set a new standard for using data in national campaigns, from deciding where to send a candidate and how to spend advertising dollars to making sure supporters cast a ballot.

The back-and-forth in the Trump camp leaves Republicans and Democrats alike wondering just how committed the candidate actually is to what has become accepted wisdom among political professionals. Some Republicans worry that Trump risks ceding potential advantages to likely Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton if he’s not willing to invest the money required to keep updating the data, and then use it effectively.

“It’s a big risk,” said Chris Wilson, who ran an expansive data operation for Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, Trump’s stiffest competition in the Republican primaries. Jeremy Bird, who worked for President Barack Obama’s data-rich campaign, said, “Flying blind is nuts.”

The use of data has evolved over the past several presidential campaigns into a shorthand for using information – starting with simple lists of potential voters, then mated with extensive details about their habits and beliefs – to guide a campaign toward its ultimate goal: the 270 electoral votes needed to win the White House.

In his AP interview, Trump discounted the value of data: The “candidate is by far the most-important thing,” he said. He said he plans a “limited” use of data in his general-election campaign and suggested Obama’s victories – universally viewed by political professionals as groundbreaking in the way data steered the campaign to voters – are misunderstood.

“Obama got the votes much more so than his data-processing machine, and I think the same is true with me,” Trump said, explaining that he will continue to focus on his signature rallies, free television exposure and his personal social-media accounts to win voters over.

Buzz Jacobs, who was on the losing end of Obama’s success in 2008 as an aide to GOP nominee John McCain, said Trump oversimplifies the president’s victories.

“We lost in large part because Obama’s ability to use data was so much better than ours,” Jacobs said.

According to South Carolina’s Republican chairman, Matt Moore: “Elections to a great degree are won on ... that last 1 or 2 percent that shows up or stays home. That group on either edge turns out because of data and digital. That’s a known fact.”

To be sure, Trump has not wholly abandoned data. His campaign spending disclosures show payments to multiple data firms, and the campaign maintains contact information collected when voters register for tickets to his rallies.