Donald Trump is months or even years behind Hillary Clinton in a digital campaign technique critical for identifying voters and devising strategy, according to the Associated Press.
“Precision digital-marketing data, a person’s online footprints, have become an electoral science that Democrats have dominated, and Republicans have chased, for a decade,” the AP writes. “Campaigns used the data at first simply to track supporters. The information now guides a range of decisions, like the types and volume of advertising, where to deploy campaign staff to mobilize voters and where a candidate should visit.”
But it’s not clear how much the presumptive GOP nominee cares. Trump has run as a populist outsider and minimized the need to deploy traditional campaign techniques. Rick Wiley, who was hired by the Trump campaign as a senior advisor in April, said Trump would run a “state of the art” campaign. Last week, he left the campaign.
