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Here is a very interesting video of a presentation made in 2017 by Molly Schweickert, Cambridge Analytica’s Global Head of Digital. In the video she describes the details of Cambridge Analytica’s triumphant Trump campaign marketing venture.
Someone asks her: When were you sure that your campaign was success and he would win the campaign? Let’s see what she says:
Okay, stop right there. Where was Cambridge Analytica getting data that showed a high probability that Trump would be victorious? No other organization was reporting anything of the sort.
What We Knew About Early Voting
Let’s take a look at what we knew about early voting at the time it was being reported.
Here is a report from Heavy, detailing the early results by state, and also describing the difficulties in using early voting data, which only shows the party affiliations of those who voted early, and in some states not even that.
On election day, Heavy estimated that Clinton was 9 percentage points ahead!
Here is a similar report from Nate Silver’s team at 538.
From Fortune Magazine.
Early voting points to an “advantage for Clinton in critical battleground states, as well as signs of strength in traditional Republican territory.”
It “could leave Donald Trump with virtually no path to the 270 electoral votes needed for victory.”
From Politico:
Democrats appear to be outpacing their 2012 early vote performance in several key swing states, giving Hillary Clinton a head start on Donald Trump in some of the most important presidential battlegrounds.
Politico
From Reuters:
With 11 days to go before the US presidential election, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton leads Republican Donald Trump by 15 percentage points among early voters.
Reuters
As of Thursday, Clinton’s odds of receiving the 270 Electoral College votes … remained at greater than 95%.
Reuters
From Slate:
In the early vote, Clinton leads in five of the six key states, including Florida. The only State Trump is ahead in is Pennsylvania, although early votes in that state are scarce. Side Note: Florida cast almost 3.7 million early votes.
Something is Fishy at Cambridge Analytica
How could Cambridge Analytica have been so sure that Schweickert would have “bet on” a Trump victory knowing now that Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin were won by a total of only 77,000 votes? As fine-grained as their data was, there is no way. No way!
Then another question, and another answer. Cambridge Analytica worked with a company that was aggregating absentee voter data from counties and states. Really? What company is this? Where are they getting this data?
And what about this? At approximately 25:50, Schweickert says something extremely interesting.
Results coming in from the Secretaries of States from absentee ballots! Results!
Really? In real time, on election day, Cambridge Analytica was getting voting data from secretaries of state? How is this possible? What information were they getting?
No matter how good their data was they still didn’t know how many people would vote and how many of them would vote.
There is only one way to know you are going to win an election–you need to be able to adjust the vote. What else was their data used for? No one would have had better data as to where they needed votes and about how many votes they needed.
Written by Unhackthevote
Read More Commentary about Cambridge Analytica:
Cambridge Analytica and the Flipping of an Election – the Law of Small Numbers
Americans Should Be Alarmed by the UK Report on Cambridge Analytica and Big Data
Cambridge Analytica — Did They Target Voter Registration Files?
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