Assertion Not checkable as stated
Internal 2020 Data Showed Hunter Biden Story Did Not Move Persuadable Voters
“A lot of people said that they were familiar with this Hunter Biden stuff. Not that many people said that it would actually make them less likely to vote for Joe Biden. And then they did focus groups and it came out that people, people did not think that Biden…”
Assertion Supported
Biden's 2020 Campaign Ignored Progressive Boycotts to Advertise on Breitbart
“There'd been this effort on the left for a while to boycott Fox News and Breitbart websites. The Biden campaign said, no, we're buying advertising there because we want to get next to the content that people are seeing.”
Assertion Supported
Donald Trump Outsourced Presidential Ground Game to Elon Musk's America PAC
“And the campaign has made a decision to effectively outsource a lot of that You know, what people call ground game or field organization, but the real boots on the ground part of campaigning to America PAC, which is the Elon Musk funded super PAC.”
Insight
Fact-Checking Viral Disinformation Often Amplifies It Via Social Media Algorithms
“Maybe you shouldn't respond, and maybe you can make the problem a whole lot worse by responding, right? You elevate it, you can end up engagement algorithms can end up, could end up helping spread it by you trying to fact check it.”
Insight
Unlike Business, Political Ad Mis-Targeting Actually Generates Votes for Competitors
“There are some really different, really important differences between business marketing and political marketing, and one of them is that the cost of a, Of mis-targeting out of a false positive in your modeling is really high in politics, right? So if you are,…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Campaigns Primarily Use AI to Draft Fundraising Emails for Testing
“Where people are using AI the most in this campaign is like, Sort of the same way we all might use it, which is like brainstorming first drafts of fundraising emails, you know, like most fundraising emails, they need to come up with new ones every day to send …”
Insight
TV Political Media Buyers Earn Effortless Commissions Compared to Digital Buyers
“And, you know, digital advertising is more labor intensive for them, but buying TV is, you know, there are only so many stations in, in Wisconsin that you can put ads on and, you know, it doesn't take any more work to double the buy and they get paid a commiss…”
Assertion Supported
Obama Analytics Operatives Secured Eric Schmidt Funding for New Firm
“And then the day after, you know, a whole bunch of them basically Were getting Eric Schmidt to launch a firm for them, and we're out giving interviews to everybody who wanted and taking credit for a whole bunch of things that probably were not theirs alone to …”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Biden's Top 2020 Defense Ad Was 15 Seconds Direct-To-Camera
“The most successful ad that they tested to these people was 15 seconds of Biden to camera, just talking about, like, I grew up in Scranton, I have middle-class values, and that's why I wanna, you know, cut taxes on middle-class people and raise them on the ric…”
Assertion Supported
Jared Kushner Convinced Donald Trump to Treat Facebook Ads as Revenue
“That came because Jared Kushner came to him and convinced him that instead of all the other things in the campaign where consultants are begging you to spend money and it goes out the door, that you can make this a revenue center by fund by through, for fundra…”
Insight
Kamala Harris Campaign Broke Precedent by Actively Amplifying Donald Trump Clips
“One other thing that they did, which is pretty novel, is that they have gotten into the, like, clipping and amplifying little bits of every crazy little thing that Trump says. I mean, there was this school of thought among Democrats. It was pretty prevailing, …”
Insight
Paying Canvassers Per Contact Creates Misaligned Incentives and Fake Data
“Hiring people off the street and paying them by the hour or contact leads to a lot of bad work, and you have a lot of really poor incentives for people to either be inefficient or give you bad data if you're paying them per complete.”
Insight
Political Campaigns Avoid AI Phone Bank Tools Fearing Brand Backlash
“I think most campaigns Are afraid of the backlash of being associated with AI even for, not necessarily even from, for manipulation, but just like, you know, on non-live callers and so I think that there's a hurdle that, that campaigns have from a kind of bran…”
Insight
Late-Cycle Campaign Ad Buying Prioritizes Dumping Cash Over ROI Efficiency
“And so at the end of the campaign, you start to see the end of the, you know, right before election day, you start to see campaigns making decisions that are driven less by efficient, like overall efficiency and more by basically where can we very quickly pars…”
Assertion Supported
Progressive PAC Hired Top Meme and GIF Creators to Counter Conspiracies
“They basically have gone out and hired some of the more successful, like, GIF and meme makers online.”
Insight
Political Arbitrage: The Biggest Upside is Marketing Outside of Election Cycles
“Sort of political entrepreneurial upside would be in communicating with the voters outside of election cycles.”
Assertion Contradicted
Billions Spent, But Zero Political Ad Dollars Go Towards Branding Parties
“And yet, no political advertising is spent branding the parties.”
Assertion Supported
2012 Presidential Campaign Data Tech Is Now Available to County Executives
“What's happening now is that the things that presidential campaigns were able to do, only presidential campaigns were able to do maybe 12 years ago, now somebody running for county executive can use”
Sasha Issenberg