Republicans’ Data Trust was a key achievement of then-GOP Chairman Reince Priebus, who wanted an answer to President Barack Obama’s effective use of data in his two national victories.
The Republican National Committee’s work caught Democrats off guard in 2016 amid widespread scoffing at Trump’s loosely organized campaign operation and his open mockery of using data to target voters. But they ignored that the Republican Party machinery had been building its voter files for years with help of other organizations on the right and that Democrats’ 2008 and 2012 successes had been Obama’s, not the party’s.