Acclaimed journalist Sasha Issenberg, author of modern politico bible The Victory Lab: The Secret Science of Winning Campaigns, writes in an article for Bloomberg News that Cambridge Analytica’s profiles of American voters were what helped Ted Cruz win the Iowa caucus.
Cambridge Analytica had set out to profile every American voter along each of the five dominant personality factors: openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism… At the same time, [Chris Wilson, the campaign’s director of analytics] deployed the two full-time analysts that Cambridge had embedded in Cruz’s headquarters to work on building statistical models more directly relevant to political attributes.
“They are very smart data scientists, so let’s take advantage of where they’re good. It’s been a very solid, collaborative relationship.”
- Chris Wilson, Campaign Director of Analytics, 2016 Ted Cruz presidential campaign