Commentary

Trump Misguided: Doesn't Think He Needs To Spend On Data

Donald Trump seems to think he can win the general election without the help of his party. Speaking with Chuck Todd of “Meet the Press,” Trump touted confidently: “I think that I win either way. I can win one way or the other.”

A number of Republican officials and lawmakers, including Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, have said they will not vote for their party’s nominee in November. While motivated surrogates for Donald Trump seem to be in short supply, there is another serious problem with doing everything his own way: Trump’s campaign lacks any coherent data intelligence operation.

One of the designers of Ted Cruz’s data operation, Jeff Roe, spoke with Politico about the importance data will have in the election. “There’s a trove of information that’s done in and around politics,” explained Roe. “It’s worth, on its worst day, 2.5 points, and in its best day, 5.5 points.”

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Thus far, Trump has refrained from investing any concrete time and money into developing a data operation. The RNC would be able to help him with that, but according to Roe, the RNC won’t be enough. “It’s going to be very hard for him to just use the RNC. The RNC has got a very candidate-generic model.”

Red, White & Blog spoke with Media iQ, the politically agnostic global analytics company, about the data presence of presidential candidates. Whereas it has been widely reported that both Sanders and Clinton have robust data analytics teams, it was clear from the conversation that Trump was seriously lagging behind.

Vice president of North American sales at Media iQ, Michael Chock, explained that “Trump is not spending heavily on digital. We have seen this to be the case throughout the cycle.”

In essence, Trump is foregoing a data operation in any way comparable to what we see with the Democrats. If he doesn’t invest in one himself, using just the RNC’s trove will likely prove an unworthy opponent for the Clinton operation, which sports dozens of analytics, digital and engineering staffers.  

Trump won the Republican nomination with just his words and tweets. The general election is a different beast, however, and his aversion to spending on a larger data operation could prove costly come November.

In the end, as Thrush put it: “Math beats mouth.”

1 comment about "Trump Misguided: Doesn't Think He Needs To Spend On Data ".
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  1. Ed Papazian from Media Dynamics Inc, June 20, 2016 at 12:58 p.m.

    The more I watch Trump's innane behavior the more I think he may be a "Manchurian Candidate"----planted by the Clintons on the gullable GOP so Hillary can become our first woman president. I doubt that Trump was "brainwashed", however----after all, what do you have to work with in this regard? Indeed---why bother?

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