Trump’s Big-Data Gurus Scout for Favorable Mexican Presidential Candidate Nacha Cattan - Bloomberg
go to original July 19, 2017

Dark Data: Trump Backers Bankrolled Firm Developing Psychological Profiles of Every U.S. Voter (Democracy Now!)

Cambridge Analytica, the big-data firm that advised President Donald Trump in his successful election campaign, is turning to Mexico in search of a new presidential candidate to get behind.

Cambridge is partnering with Pig.gi, a phone app in Mexico and Colombia that gives 200,000 active users free service in exchange for watching ads, reading stories and taking surveys. The analytics firm is hoping to use data mined from Pig.gi to help a candidate in Mexico’s July 2018 presidential election, and several political parties have already expressed interest, according to both companies.

Cambridge is wading into a country with a history of divisive and sometimes violent elections. Next year’s contest to lead Latin America’s second-biggest economy isn’t expected to be any different as Mexico has been rocked by corruption scandals, vote-buying accusations and reports of spying.

Based in London and funded in part by the family of billionaire Robert Mercer, Cambridge has come under fire for its tactics in campaigns from the Brexit vote in the U.K. to its digital activity for Trump. Senator Mark Warner of Virginia said this week that he wants to look into work by Cambridge because of the way false election stories about Hillary Clinton were circulated and targeted online.

In its latest venture, Cambridge is seeking commercial clients as well as political ones. For the latter, its goal is to bring Mexican politicians more in tune with the electorate.

“So many people are undecided and unmotivated” in Mexico, Brittany Kaiser, Cambridge’s vice president of business development, said in an interview in Mexico City. “There’s a huge opportunity in this country to find the issues that are important for people and actually turn people out to vote.”

Left-leaning Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is the only member of a political party who has emerged as a presidential aspirant and it will be difficult for other parties to play catch-up, she said.

Read the rest at Bloomberg

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Related: Warner Wants More Investigation Into Trump Digital Campaign Role (Bloomberg)

Related: 7 Central Issues Trump Campaigned on and How He's Done in 6 Months (The Washington Post)

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