WASHINGTON — Building upon its fundraising prowess, Mitt Romney's campaign began a secretive data-mining project this summer to sift through Americans' personal information – including their purchasing history and church attendance – to identify new and likely wealthy donors, The Associated Press has learned.
The project employs strategies similar to those the business world uses to influence the way Americans shop and think. Now they're being used to sway presidential elections. The same personal data consumers give away – often unwittingly when they swipe their credit cards or log into Facebook – is now being used by the people who might one day occupy the White House.
For Romney's data-mining project, which began as early as June, the Republican candidate quietly turned to a little-known but successful analytics firm that previously performed marketing work for a colleague tied to Bain & Co., the management-consulting firm that Romney once led.
The head of Buxton Co. of Fort Worth, Texas, chief executive Tom Buxton, confirmed to the AP his company's efforts, which help Romney identify potentially wealthy and previously untapped Republican donors across the country. The Romney campaign declined to discuss on the record its work with Buxton or the project's overall success.
There are no records of payments to Buxton from Romney's campaign, the Republican National Committee or a joint fundraising committee. Under federal law, companies cannot use corporate treasury funds or resources, such as proprietary data analysis, for in-kind contributions to federal campaigns.
The effort by Romney appears to be the first example of a political campaign using such extensive data analysis. President Barack Obama's re-election campaign has long been known as data-savvy, but Romney's project appears to take a page from the Fortune 500 business world and dig deeper into available consumer data.
rest at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/24/mitt-romney-data-mining_n_1827318.html
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