Cambridge Analytica, the international data mining and analysis company that famously helped United States President Donald Trump win the elections through a targeted communication campaign, is in talks with a large opposition party in India for the upcoming general elections in 2019. In a presentation made to the party in August, Cambridge Analytica has etched a data-driven strategy to target voters on social media, analysing online user behaviour and “connecting the dots” across different citizen databases. According to two people familiar with the discussions, the big data analytics company whose tagline says “Data drives all we do,” has chalked out a comprehensive plan for the Indian political party.
“The proposal includes building a “national data infrastructure project” for coordinating team planning, strategy and targeted messaging. It also involves identifying the gaps in data that exists in different databases, and making relevant connections using internal and external sources and data analytics to give meaningful insights,” said one of these sources, on the condition that they not to be identified.
They declined to identify the party. An email sent to Cambridge Analytica was unanswered at the time of publishing this piece.
While the presentation identifies social media as a key winning strategy for the Bharatiya Janata Party in 2014, Cambridge Analytica says the opposition will have to build a comprehensive data-driven strategy to win the general elections in 2019, beginning with the assembly elections in Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh.
Full Article: Big data firm Cambridge Analytica in talks with Indian opposition party for 2019 polls: Sources – Moneycontrol.com.