Mark Halperin

They have these voter files, right?

Data on every registered voter.

The information you get differs depending on what state somebody's in.

And then they put in a big database and they cross-reference it with consumer preferences that they get from these big voter files.

And then they say, okay, I know Joe Smith lives at 125 Main Street, and I know he's a swing voter based on the data that we have.

I want him to get to vote for my candidate.

So how am I going to reach that person?

Digital ads, video ads, maybe even direct mail, right, that's still used.

That's the stuff that campaigns.

That's the stuff that's going to determine what happens.

And if Jeff Roe is right, and I believe he is with respect to Chairman Harrison, if Jeff Roe is right that the Republicans are currently superior in data, and there's a variety of reasons why that may be true.

They're closer to Silicon Valley than they've been probably ever.

And that produces a lot of access to data expertise.

They control the White House and the RNC, which gives them more ability to kind of be coordinated.

And they have just a lot of people in the party now at senior levels, including the Trump political team, who believe in data, who believe in the importance of that.

Mobilizing voters to persuade them how to vote and to get them out to vote using technology

That's as big as anything.

Now, the fundraising matters because you've got to pay for all that.

But if you're raising a lot of money but you're spending it poorly...

And people argue that's what the Clinton campaign did when they lost to Trump.