Clinton ahead of Trump in voter-data campaign

In this May 10, 2016 file photo, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during an interview with The Associated Press in his office at Trump Tower in New York.
In this May 10, 2016 file photo, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during an interview with The Associated Press in his office at Trump Tower in New York.

PHILADELPHIA -- Donald Trump trails Hillary Clinton by months, even years, in using fast-evolving digital campaigning to win over voters, data specialists working with the GOP say.

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AP Photo

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton speaks at the Home of Chicken and Waffles, Friday, May 27, 2016, in Oakland, Calif.

The presumptive Republican presidential nominee has dismissed the science that defines 21st-century political campaigns, a tool that President Barack Obama used effectively in winning two terms and that the Clinton campaign has worked on for nearly a year.

And while it is too early to tell whether the late start signals trouble for Trump, it illustrates the difference between Trump's proudly outsider campaign and the institutional knowledge within Clinton's.

"She's been able to prepare a general election campaign since the beginning," said Alex Lundry, former senior technology adviser to Mitt Romney's 2012 Republican presidential campaign. "That head start in terms of time is extraordinarily valuable."

Precision digital-marketing data, a person's online footprints, have become an electoral science that Democrats have dominated and Republicans have chased for a decade. At first, campaigns used the data simply to track supporters. The information now guides a range of decisions, such as the types and volume of advertising, where to deploy campaign staff to mobilize voters, and where a candidate should visit.

Trump's team has been unclear about its use of data.

Trump told The Associated Press this month that the tool was "overrated" and that he planned "limited" data use during the general election, though his campaign has worked with firms and a small in-house staff to track voters during the primaries.

Later, senior adviser Rick Wiley, who was hired in April, suggested Trump would run a "state-of-the-art" campaign and use data strategically, relying on Trump's own list of supporters, the Republican National Committee's voter list and a data service financed largely by the committee called Data Trust.

"All of the data points -- whatever they are -- our ability to harvest that data is invaluable," said Wiley, the committee's former executive director. He has since left the campaign, after what a source close to the matter said were disagreements with Trump loyalists about who should lead campaign efforts in key states. The person spoke on condition of anonymity, lacking authorization to discuss internal campaign matters publicly.

Clinton's campaign has been collecting data since she announced her candidacy 11 months ago. Elan Kriegel, an analytics director for Obama in 2012, now heads Clinton's analytics team. And Jeremy Bird, credited with using the data in 2012 for decision-making that preceded Obama's re-election, is advising the Clinton campaign.

Kriegel said the nearly yearlong preparation has allowed his team to build intricate voter-turnout models aimed at predicting voter behavior, especially in potential swing states.

"If you weren't doing it several months ago, then you really are starting from scratch," Kriegel said.

China on Trump

Trump has been slow to embrace data to improve his campaign outreach, yet supporters have emerged elsewhere -- in China.

The Chinese government has denounced Trump's threats of economic retaliation, but many Chinese observers see a silver lining in Trump's focus on economic issues instead of human rights and political freedoms, unlike his presumed rival in the general election, Clinton.

China features prominently in Trump's rhetoric: He regularly accuses the country of stealing American jobs and cheating at global trade. But in China, he's just now becoming a public figure, despite fame elsewhere for his voluble utterances, high-profile businesses and reality TV shows.

Trump "could in fact be the best president for China," Hong Kong Phoenix Television political commentator Wu Jun said during a recent on-air discussion.

"That's because the Republican Party is more practical, and Trump is a businessman who puts his commercial interests above everything else," Wu said. Clinton, on the other hand, "might be the least friendly president toward China."

It's not clear how familiar Trump actually is with China. While he has claimed to have made "billions of dollars dealing with China," he has no known investments in the nation. Chinese, however, are customers for Trump's hotel, golf course and real estate ventures, while Trump-branded clothing and accessories have been made in China.

Trump's call for a 45 percent tariff on imports that would hit China hard has been lambasted by Finance Minister Lou Jiwei, who said enacting such a tariff would cost the U.S. its global leadership.

Still, Chinese are used to American candidates making strong comments about their country during elections, only to moderate their positions once in office, said Nanjing University foreign-relations expert Zhu Feng.

"The most important thing is that he or she be solid in their knowledge about China and know how to strike the right balance," Zhu said.

Trump's questioning of U.S. foreign military commitments is also welcomed by Chinese nationalists who want China to be top dog in Asia and challenge U.S. dominance in the rest of the world. His opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, which seeks to offset Chinese influence, also bodes well in Beijing.

The Chinese public, meanwhile, seems unfazed by Trump's anti-immigration stance, with its overwhelming focus on Mexico, and the candidate's vow to bar Muslims from entering the U.S.

In contrast, many Chinese have qualms about Clinton, who as a former secretary of state under Obama is closely associated with Washington's "pivot" to Asia that has been heavily criticized by Beijing.

Overall, Chinese public sentiment toward Trump appears mixed. Comparing him to a figure from folklore known for sowing chaos, the official Global Times newspaper proclaimed him a symptom of an "American disease."

"I don't think many people knew him as a businessman before the campaign," said Shanghai information technology engineer Kong Kong, who was unimpressed with Trump's political outsider status.

"Politics is not entertainment, and simply being fresh may not be a good thing," Kong said. "A lack of political experience and an excess of personality may lead to an imbalance among interest groups and an abuse of authority, which are not good things for America."

Trump, though, has won many Chinese supporters, particularly online. There, chat groups such as "Donald Trump Super Fans Club" and "God Emperor Trump" have popped up in recent months. One posting in a Weibo messaging service chat group was unrestrained in its enthusiasm.

"The more I know about Donald Trump," the post said, "the more I feel that he's not only saving the U.S., but also the entire world."

Obama's ratings

Despite Trump's growing popularity elsewhere, Clinton's chances, should she win the nomination, are said to be strong based on another set of data: Obama's approval ratings.

A president's popularity, combined with strong U.S. economic data, historically have proven to be better predictors than horse-race polls this far from the general election.

"Elections are a choice, but a lot of that choice is about whether or not people want to stay the course," said Christopher Wlezien, a University of Texas political science professor who co-wrote a book on how voters' presidential preferences evolve over a campaign. "The referendum choice is going to be based a lot on what people think of the president and how the economy is doing."

That's good news for Clinton, who has clung tightly to Obama's record while campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination against Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont. Although Clinton comfortably led Trump in hypothetical match-ups for most of the year, three recent national polls showed the two essentially in a dead heat if the election were held today.

But amid what has become a raucous 2016 campaign, the public is growing fonder of Obama. His approval ratings have been 50 percent or higher for 11 of 12 recent weeks, a level he hadn't hit in more than three years. His current rating -- 51 percent for the week ended May 22 -- is two points higher than Ronald Reagan's was at this phase of his presidency, according to Gallup data.

Going back to 1952, the incumbent party won the largest share of the popular vote in nine out of 10 elections in which the sitting president had an average job-approval rating of at least 48 percent in the second quarter of the election year, according to data gathered by Wlezien and his co-author, Robert Erikson of Columbia University.

The exception was Richard Nixon's narrow loss to John F. Kennedy in 1960. Democrat Al Gore won the popular vote in 2000 but lost the election after a ballot dispute in Florida. The incumbent party lost the White House in all six elections in which presidential job approval was lower.

Information for this article was contributed by Thomas Beaumont, Christopher Bodeen, Dong Tongjian and Fu Ting of The Associated Press; and by Mike Dorning of Bloomberg News.

A Section on 05/31/2016

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