Data shows effectiveness of Trump’s digital strategy during the 2016 election

By Kent R. Kroeger (April 9, 2018)

{SPSS dataset used to conduct the following analysis can be found here: ANES2016}

Donald Trump’s digital strategy in the 2016 presidential campaign, led by his son-in-law Jared Kushner and with a likely assist from the Russians, had a demonstrable impact on the election outcome.

If it was not a decisive factor in the final outcome, it was pretty damn close.

Its apparent targeting focused on those potential “conservative” voters most vulnerable to defecting to the Hillary Clinton: Less-than-strong conservatives over 40 years of age who used social media to share political information during the campaign.

“Slightly conservative” and “conservative” Americans accounted for 25 percent of the U.S. vote eligible population in 2016 according to the 2016 American National Election Study (ANES). And within that 25 percent, just under half of them said they used Facebook or Twitter (hereafter referred to as social media) to share political information during the campaign. That is almost 29 million people.

That is a large number of potential voters considering the 2016 electoral college result would have changed if only 70,000 Trump voters in Michigan…