https://www.boston.com/news/politics/2022/10/24/why-am-i-seeing-that-political-ad-check-your-trump-resistance-score/ (https://www.boston.com/news/politics/2022/10/24/why-am-i-seeing-that-political-ad-check-your-trump-resistance-score/)
Why am I seeing that political ad? Check your ‘Trump Resistance’ score
“The most likely predictor is what the person has done in the past.”
By Natasha Singer, New York Times Service
October 24, 2022 | 9:03 AM
In the lead-up to the 2020 presidential election, a voter analytics firm called PredictWise came up with a novel approach to help Democratic campaigns target persuadable Republicans: “COVID concern” scores.
To create the scores, the company first analyzed an immense data set showing the cellphone locations of tens of millions of Americans during the initial lockdown months of the pandemic. Then it ranked people based on their travel patterns.
Republicans whose phone locations showed that they left home a lot received high “COVID-19 decree violation” scores, while those who mainly stayed home received low scores, according to a PredictWise report. In follow-up surveys of some voters, researchers found that stay-at-home Republicans were almost as concerned about the pandemic as Democrats.
The firm said it had used the data to help Democrats in several swing states target more than 350,000 “COVID-concerned” Republicans with COVID-related campaign ads. In Arizona, PredictWise reported, the scores helped Democrats “open up just over 40,000 persuasion targets” for Mark Kelly, who was running for Senate. (Kelly’s office did not respond to emails and calls requesting comment.)
Voter-profiling systems like the COVID-19 scores may be invisible to most people. But they provide a glimpse into a vast voter data-mining ecosystem in the United States involving dozens of political consulting, analytics, media, marketing and advertising software companies. ...