“big data” is a tactic from the last century used in conventional campaigns as a substitute for the candidates themselves connecting with the voters on a visceral level. It’s the kind of tactic used by candidates who live in bunkers and communicate with the media and the voters mostly by surrogates.
When both candidates campaign like that, then whoever has the best “big data” might have a better chance at winning.
When the candidate is Donald Trump, who is a true master of both social media and the old media and who is his own best advertisement and spokesperson, “big data” isn’t as important as it is to a bunker candidate like Hillary.
I've thought about "big data" quite a bit. In fact, a couple years back I authored a telecom industry report on the trend. And big data is enormously useful in things like search engines, fraud detection, market analysis, network traffic analysis, etc.
But as far as campaigns to raise money or change minds, I techniques is abused to the point of becoming a negative. Cruz bragged about using big data, but his fund raising campaigns via email were irritating and it was hard to "unsubscribe" from those.
The other thing is the tendency to micro-segment the message -- tell some people one thing and other people another. It's a real quick way to lose credibility.
Now in the telecom industry, there seems to be a move away from analytics (big data) when it comes to driving personalized emails, SMS messages and the like.
The new approach is to have a personal webpage where the mobile subscriber can see his account balance and view the latest promotion tuned to his orojected "preferences".
If you get people used to going to that web page, then you can dispense with sending all the little begging messages -- which seem more and more like spam.
Back to the campaign... I wholeheartedly agree that Trump has found the right combination of media outreach and a judicious use of personal email.