Cruz a long way Outspends GOP opponents On knowledge And Voter targeting Tech

Ted Cruz would not have Donald Trump’s star power, but he may make up for it by way of having extra science—knowledge science—behind his marketing campaign.

The Cruz marketing campaign, nearly from the very start, made significant investments in voter knowledge, analytics, and targeting. The campaign spent greater than $10 million in those areas all through 2015, in line with new regulatory filings to the Federal Election commission.

The spending picked up dramatically in the final quarter of the 12 months, when Cruz was once trailing Trump by large margins in the polls. The Cruz marketing campaign paid out $7.2 million in charges for information and analytics in the fourth quarter, while the Trump marketing campaign paid out simply $738,517.

Trump has relied on steady television coverage of his campaign by means of Fox news and others, and on his popularity on social media, to get his face and message in entrance of prospective voters. The polls recommend that it is labored beautifully, but some experts surprise if it’s going to be enough to maneuver supporters to caucus for him in Iowa on Monday night time.

Social media and tv have been a challenge for the less-showy Cruz, which may be why that marketing campaign has gone all-in with excessive-tech focused on and knowledge crunching.

so much of the cash Cruz paid out in 2015 was once spent on voter-record condominium or paid to analytics companies that search for patterns in demographics information and offer advice on targeted media buys.

Cruz and company paid out $three.three million to the Arlington, Virginia-based direct advertising agency The Lukens company for voter “list apartment.” The Alexandria, Virginia-based totally e-donations and targeting tech company marketing campaign solutions was additionally paid just over $3 million for fundraising tech and listing condominium.

The campaign also paid out $three.eight million to a relative newcomer to the voter focused on space, Cambridge Analytica. the corporate, whose expertise roots go back to militia “psy-ops” research, offers a method of examining the character types of voters to decide which political messages might move them to motion.

The Jeb Bush campaign spent roughly $800,000 within the fourth quarter on information and analytics. Marco Rubio spent about $450,000.

The Trump campaign, in the meantime, has spent more on baseball caps than it has on voter knowledge and analytics. The campaign was smartly into the fourth quarter of 2015 sooner than it paid the Washington-based totally company L2 $235,000 to license its voter information.

the brand new Federal Election fee filings also verify that Trump employed two ex-Republican nationwide Committee knowledge operatives to work with the L2 data. certainly one of them, Matt Ciepielowski, earned $forty four,277 in the fourth quarter. the opposite, Witold Chrabaszcz, was once paid $four,384 for his products and services in the same quarter.

in the third quarter of 2015, Politico studies, the Trump campaign rented a voter record from Newsmax Media for $200,000, and paid the GOP digital firm targeted Victory $47,000 for fundraising software. and that is the reason it.

As for those “Make the us great again” hats, Politico pegs Trump’s spend at $450,000 within the fourth quarter on my own.