United Kingdom outlet Channel 4 News reported a massive data leak from the Trump campaign’s 2016 database used for ad targeting on TV and social media. One group, labeled “deterrence,” disproportionately targeted Black voters.
What We Know:
- Channel 4 News reported that the 2016 Trump campaign database contained details from almost 200 million Americans who were grouped based on demographic information to be targeted with TV and social media ads. According to the report, one of the groups, which largely targeted Black potential voters, in total approximately 3.5 million people, was labeled “deterrence,” a group that the Trump campaign’s chief data scientist later said the campaign “hope doesn’t show up to vote”. The Channel 4 News’ analysis described that, while 13% of Black Americans were categorized overall, they made up 29% of the “deterrence” group.
- According to the outlet, the giant database split the 200 million Americans into eight categories, including ones titled “get out the vote” and “persuasion,” aimed at targeting potential voters in 16 battleground states for the election with ads on television and social media. The leaked database contained very in-depth information, including addresses, party affiliation, and voting history as well as scoring individuals on election issues such as jobs, law and order, and healthcare. Channel 4 reported that the leaked data is made up of more than 5,000 files and 5 terabytes, making it one of the largest leaked files in history.
- In 2018, the campaign’s digital media director, Brad Parscale, told PBS Frontline that he was “nearly 100% sure we did not run any campaigns that targeted even African Americans,” but these new documents revealed by Channel 4 News show that thousands of dollars were spent on targeted attack ads against then-Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. According to an investigation into the database, the campaign released targeted ads aimed at dissuading a select group of voters from supporting Clinton.
- The results from the “deterrence” groups are clear. In the swing state of Wisconsin, which Trump won in 2016, turnout of Black voters collapsed by 19%, according to Channel 4 News. Although they formed 5.4% of the population, 35% of the “deterrence” group were Black in Wisconsin. Also in Wisconsin, the segment of potential voters named “persuasion,” those who could possibly be persuaded to vote for Trump, was 75% white, and just 1.8% of them were Black. The database shows this pattern was repeated across several states.
- The Trump campaign posted six million versions of highly targeted advertisements on Facebook in 2016, according to the news outlet. At the time, Facebook had not yet set up its publicly viewable ad library, so it’s not clear exactly what was shown to those groups. However, Channel 4 News said they saw a confidential Cambridge Analytica document that showed $55,000 was spent in Georgia on targeting the “deterrence” group with what was labeled as the “predators video”. The video featured Clinton in 1996 describing Black gang members as “super predators”, a comment she later apologized for.
- In 2016, for the first time in 20 years, Black voter turnout fell, although the cause isn’t directly confirmed. Jamal Watkins, Vice President of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) told the outlet that the tactics used by the Trump campaign amounted to a modern-day suppression campaign.
- Facebook, who has been under intense scrutiny for the role they played in the 2016 election, released a statement confirming that the company has changed since 2016 and that what happened then, could not happen today. “We have 35,000 people working to ensure the integrity of our platform, created a political ads library to make political advertising more transparent than anywhere else, and have protected more than 200 elections worldwide,” the spokesperson said. “We also have rules prohibiting voter suppression and are running the largest voting information campaign in American history.”
The Trump campaign did not respond about what “deterrence” meant in this context, but Trump campaign Communications Director Tim Murtaugh dismissed Channel 4’s report as “fake news”.
