“A voter analytics firm harvested data from millions of Americans’ cellphones during the 2020 COVID-19 lockdowns and used the data to assign phone users a ‘COVID-19 decree violation’ score and a ‘COVID-19 concern’ score, according to a whitepaper released by PredictWise, the firm that harvested the data,” The Defender reported.
A voter analytics firm harvested data from millions of Americans’ cellphones during the 2020 COVID lockdowns + used data to assign phone users a “COVID-19 decree violation” score + “COVID-19 concern” score.https://t.co/xHjIjHpGje
— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) October 26, 2022
Via The Defender:
The data, derived from “nearly 2 billion GPS pings” stemming from “ground truth, real-time, ultra-granular location patterns,” according to PredictWise, was then used to target election-related messages to voters during the 2020 election season.
According to PredictWise, the firm “understood that there were potential pockets of voters to target with COVID-19 messaging and turned high-dimensional data covering over 100 million Americans into measures of adherence to COVID-19 restrictions during deep lockdown.”
The data was collected with mindful political purposes.
PredictWise said:
“It doesn’t take a data scientist to know that COVID-19 was going to play a major role in the 2020 election.
“This once in a lifetime pandemic took control of the political debate, our airways, and ultimately our lives.”
The data specifically targeted Republican voters:
“PredictWise targeted Republicans who scored high on our measure of COVID-19 decree violation (folks who were on the go more often than their neighbors) and Republicans who scored low on our measure of COVID-19 decree violation (folks who mostly or always stayed at home) in the swing state, Ohio, and asked survey questions.”
PredictWise also developed “COVID concern” scores:
“PredictWise found that Republican non-movers’ (compliers) concern around COVID-19 and persuadability was almost as high as Democrats overall and Republican non-movers over the age of 65 were more concerned about COVID-19 than Democrats.”
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As The New York Times noted, PredictWise provided the data to Democrat campaigns and the Democrat National Committee to develop campaign ads targeting swing voters.
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.
The Gateway Pundit elaborated on how PredictWise helped Democrats:
Democrats in swing states have partnered with PredictWise, which “tracks the opinions, attitudes and behaviors” of over 260 million Americans or 78 percent of the US population, to target voters with ad campaigns.
The firm’s client lists include the Democratic National Committee, the Democrat Parties of Arizona, North Dakota, Ohio, Florida and South Carolina and Target Smart, an organization that provides political data for campaigns and advocacy organizations.
PredictWise claims the data, which identified “persuasion targets,” was provided to the Arizona Democrats to secure the electoral victory of Senator Mark Kelly.
“The Arizona Dems Coordinated Campaign in support of now U.S. Senator Mark Kelly was able to deploy this real-time location model to open up just over 40,000 persuasion targets that normally would have fallen off, allowing them to give the right message to the right voter at the right time,” the company states.
The Defender noted:
According to PredictWise, 2020 was the first year in which it “made its first push into the political landscape, serving data to campaigns both large and small” — including Ohio state senate campaigns, Democratic national committees and state parties, federal candidates, national progressive organizations and political action committees, or super PACS, that can take unlimited contributions.
The firm was founded in 2017 by Tobi (Tobias) Kontizer, formerly of Facebook Research, and David Rothschild, an economist with Microsoft Research.
Another firm closely connected to the Democratic Party, Impact Research, was advising the party and the Biden administration as early as February 2022 on how to position itself as having “defeated” COVID-19.
Read the full PredictWise WhitePaper HERE.
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