Cambridge Analytica basically didn't work. For all the data it collected, it amounted to trying to build political influence by reading tea leaves.

The strongest decider in the outcome of the 2016 election is that the Trump campaign spent something like a factor of three more on advertising across the board than the Clinton campaign. Cambridge Analytica was more representative of the notion that the Republicans were willing to spend money on anything that might work than on the efficacy of that specific approach.

At the end of the day, that election came down to a combination of sexism in the voting base (Clinton's gender had a demonstrable effect on turnout among non-voters to vote against her; Americans don't want to admit it but in their hearts they're still pretty sexist) and good old fashioned, well understood rules of how spending on ads can move an election by a percentage point or two. The Democratic party as a whole believed Trump to be so unelectable that they pulled money from the presidential campaign to push it into campaigns down ticket in an attempt to win a massive political coup by controlling the House, Senate, and Presidency at the same time; they underestimated the political position of their opponents and it backfired spectacularly.

What's your view on their effect on elections in other countries?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridge_Analytica#Elections

I don't have nearly enough visibility on the political process of other countries to comment. I can only extrapolate by observing that Cambridge Analytica's core business value (harvesting personal data, using it to build a political profile, and microtargeting ads based on that profile) was functionally no better than just "spending more on advertising" in the American 2016 race. So I put burden of proof on those who claim otherwise to show that CA had meaningful influence in any other race.

It would be more surprising to me if they were uniquely unable to build a working psychological profile of an American voter versus any other voter then the simpler scenario that their entire concept was technological snake oil.

There are other countries? /s

As a professional advertiser who has worked in political ads, I can tell you it had no effect on any of the results of these campaigns. A bunch of bad people hired them after the Trump campaign because they bought the fluff too.

Noting that CA and their parent company SCL were working on elections for years before the Trump campaign.

> The strongest decider in the outcome of the 2016 election is that the Trump campaign spent something like a factor of three more on advertising across the board than the Clinton campaign.

Can you cite your campaign spending numbers? Wikipedia says the opposite: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_States_presidentia... I'm searching for a source that says what you claim and can't find any: https://www.google.com/search?q=trump+campaign+advertising+o... https://www.google.com/search?q=trump+outspent+hillary https://www.google.com/search?q=trump+advertising+spending+v... https://www.google.com/search?q=hillary+spent+less+than+trum...

Is my google-fu shit? Maybe. Regardless...

> The Democratic party as a whole believed Trump to be so unelectable that they pulled money from the presidential campaign

The root cause was their arrogance. Hillary was barely campaigning at all. It would not have cost her much anything to call into the major news channels every day^ but instead Hillary was effectively incommunicado for much of 2016. It's as if she thought campaigning was beneath her.

Also, I don't know how you can break apart Americans disliking women in general and Americans disliking Hillary particularly. She personally has been a popular target for derision for more than 20 years before her 2016 campaign. The DNC may have considered Trump unelectable but they were burying their heads in the sand w.r.t. Hillary's own unelectability problem. Which goes back to the arrogance thing..

At least they've figured it out now. Nobody seriously talked about her for 2020 and nobody is seriously suggesting her for 2024.

^ Most of Trump's 'advertising' was given to him for free in this manner, maybe you're assigning some arbitrary dollar value to this news coverage to say he spent more?

[delayed]

FYI - referring to Cambridge Analytica like it has any meaningful relationship to privacy, ad tech or election results is the silliest thing you can say to someone who has any understanding of the subject. Cambridge Analytica is a like a canary in a coal mine that says, "this person has no actual understanding of the issues".

Wait until you read about tactics Obama used before Cambridge..

https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/facebook-data-...

Wait until you learn that Cambridge Analytica had no discernible effect on the 2016 US presidential election or the Brexit referendum and this entire "scandal" was bullshit: https://truthonthemarket.com/2019/08/27/7-things-netflixs-th...