The role of technology in the presidential election

EARLY in America’s presidential campaign, pundits compared the contest between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump to a fight between a large tanker and Somali pirates. This turned out to be particularly true of the digital campaigns: a massive data battleship lost to a chaotic flotilla of social-media speedboats. The big question now is what this means for future elections, both in America and abroad.

Mrs Clinton’s campaign was arguably the most data-driven in American history. Her organisation employed dozens of data scientists who designed statistical models that determined, for instance, which Democrat-leaning voters should get a knock on the door from a friendly volunteer to remind them to do their civic duty. The campaign’s master programme ran six times as many simulations a day as the one that helped Barack Obama get re-elected in 2012.