© 2024 WLRN
MIAMI | SOUTH FLORIDA
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

How The Trump Campaign Used Big Data To Deter Miami-Dade’s Black Communities From Voting

Kent Pollock lived in Opa-locka but has moved to Riviera Beach. Mr. Pollock was marked for ‘deterrence’ by the Trump campaign in 2016.
Jose A. Iglesias/El Nuevo Herald
/
JIGLESIAS@ELNUEVOHERALD.COM
Kent Pollock lived in Opa-locka but has moved to Riviera Beach. Mr. Pollock was marked for ‘deterrence’ by the Trump campaign in 2016.

Donald Trump’s team knew they couldn’t win the 2016 election simply by persuading people to vote for Trump.

They also had to make sure Hillary Clinton supporters didn’t come out to the polls.

So the campaign and its allies used big data to target Black communities along Miami-Dade County’s historically disenfranchised Interstate 95 corridor. There, residents became some of the 12.3 million unwitting subjects of a groundbreaking nationwide experiment: A computer algorithm that analyzed huge sums of potential voters’ personal data — things they’d said and done on Facebook, credit card purchases, charities they supported, and even personality traits — decided they could be manipulated into not voting. They probably wouldn’t even know it was happening.

Read more at our news partner the Miami Herald.

More On This Topic