Donald Trump’s rivals cling to the hope that the surprise GOP presidential front-runner lacks the know-how to lure supporters to the polls, but POLITICO has learned that his campaign several months ago assembled an experienced data team to build sophisticated models to transform fervor into votes.

The team is led by two low-profile former Republican National Committee data strategists, Matt Braynard and Witold Chrabaszcz, and includes assistance from the political data outfit L2, according to multiple sources familiar with the effort. The data push is focused on integrating information Trump has collected, through his campaign website and at voter rallies, on nontraditional or unregistered supporters. It also includes commercial data obtained from the RNC and other sources, in an effort to mobilize voters in key early states, the sources said.


Trump’s campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, who has significant experience in voter registration, declined to comment on the data program. “We don’t discuss internal procedures; however, Mr. Trump has been underestimated through every step of this campaign, to many people’s demise,” said Lewandowski, who ran a pilot registration project for Americans for Prosperity in 2014.

Braynard and Chrabaszcz did not respond to interview requests.

And, while the extent of the campaign’s data program remains unclear, it’s likely less robust than those built by the more traditional campaigns of his rivals, including Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush, who have combined to spend tens of millions of dollars on data.





But the very existence of the Trump data program undermines the assumption that his campaign is uninterested in ― or unaware of ― the basic technological infrastructure needed to identify and mobilize voters. Such tools, used so effectively by Barack Obama during his two presidential campaigns, could be especially critical for Trump as he seeks to increase turnout among new or untraditional GOP voters.

In October, as it became apparent that the real estate showman’s position atop GOP primary polls was more than a short-lived fluke, his campaign sought proposals from multiple companies that provide data and modeling to help candidates identify persuadable voters and mobilize core supporters, including the nonpartisan political data firms L2 and rVotes, according to sources. They said the campaign ultimately entered into an agreement with L2, which worked with Braynard and Chrabaszcz to tailor data for the campaign’s use.

“It was a sizable purchase of data,” said L2 president Bruce Willsie, who declined to give a specific price tag. The Bellevue, Washington-based firm provides data on registered voters and also nonregistered adults like the ones Trump’s campaign hopes to register and mobilize. And Willsie said L2’s work with Trump’s campaign is ongoing. “We continue to provide services to the Trump campaign, and the data package is a major part of that,” he said, though he referred further queries to the Trump campaign.

In early October, Trump’s Virginia state director, Mike Rubino, reached out to rVotes, writing in an email: “We want to utilize this ASAP.” Steve Adler, rVotes' owner, said the Trump campaign has yet to follow up, though he contended his firm’s services “would be the perfect system for [Trump] on many levels.”

The campaign’s data team is also integrating data collected from Eventbrite, the online service it uses to organize its rallies, sources said.

The goal is to fold all that new and purchased data, which includes contact and other information for supporters who aren’t registered to vote, into the RNC’s massive voter file. As POLITICO revealed, the RNC agreed to allow Trump to use the party’s voter file in late November or early December. That agreement, which is similar to those the party reached with most of the other presidential campaigns, gave Trump access to a database containing information on more than 200 million Americans without any upfront payment. It did, however, require him to pledge to support the GOP’s eventual nominee and to feed back to the RNC any new data his campaign collects.

Before the RNC executes such so-called list-sharing deals, it works with campaigns to ensure they have the technical aptitude to handle data properly and avoid potentially damaging breaches. Sources say Braynard represented the Trump campaign in those discussions.

Braynard and Chrabaszcz worked together at the RNC on what would become the party’s Voter Vault national database during George W. Bush’s presidency. Chrabaszcz, who goes by “Vito,” was among the party’s “basement dwellers” ― a group of data engineers who seldom interacted with political strategists ― but relished his brushes with big political names, posting photos of himself with Karl Rove at a White House party. Braynard, a South Carolina native who writes fiction on the side (his self-published book of short stories includes one on a cooking competition “where the loser becomes the main course”), has cast himself more as a data-savvy political strategist.

But a POLITICO survey on Tuesday of leading Republican data operatives found both men largely unknown in the tight-knit community. Multiple operatives expressed skepticism that the Trump campaign, if it received the RNC voter file five or six weeks ago, would have time to integrate data from potential supporters who are not currently registered to vote into its various outreach and turnout models in time to be useful for next month’s caucuses and primaries in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada.

“It’s going to be challenging to do it in a quick turnaround,” said a longtime GOP data expert who has worked for one of Trump's 2016 rivals.

But Bill Skelly, a longtime RNC data operative, vouched for both Braynard and Chrabaszcz, with whom he’s crossed paths over the past 15 years.

“Having access to the RNC file and two people who understand it is valuable,” said Skelly, explaining he worked more closely with Chrabaszcz, who was responsible for cleaning up state voter-roll data and putting it into the national RNC file: “Vito is outstanding with data. He’s a real good data manipulator.”

And Skelly called Braynard “a real smart guy. I’d like to think having been in the RNC, like he was, he probably understands at least the genesis of the data. Understanding the nuance of political data is a difficult thing to do. For a lot of people it takes some time to learn nuances. I’d imagine he’s probably a good asset.”

Braynard also worked for veteran GOP pollster Frank Luntz. And, after leaving the RNC, he started his own eponymous voter data and polling firm, which between 2006 and 2012 collected a relatively piddling $36,000 in fees from various federal GOP campaigns and committees, according to Federal Election Commission filings.

In a November 2006 press release issued by his firm, Braynard boasted that, thanks to his patented “Braynard Precision Survey Method,” he was the only pollster to correctly predict the wide victory margin for Democrat Ben Cardin in his Maryland Senate race that year against Republican Michael Steele.

“Our method succeeds where others fail because we seek out individual respondents who are pre-determined to be likely voters and are part of a geographically, racially, and ideologically balanced universe,” Braynard is quoted as saying. "Because we don't have to dial as much or ask any screener questions, we are in and out of the field faster and our costs are lower. We are also able to use other pre-determined information that we would otherwise have to ask for: party affiliation, race, and geography. This further brings costs down and accuracy up."

Trump has made his wealth a centerpiece of his campaign and has boasted of his willingness to spend “whatever it takes” from his own fortune to win the White House. But his campaign has faced questions about its willingness to invest in traditional campaign tools ― including polling, opposition research, data and voter contact. Even after the campaign unveiled a television advertising campaign on which Trump pledged to spend $2 million per week, some remained skeptical that he would follow through.

Data also is critical to placing ad buys strategically.

Before getting serious about its data effort, Trump's campaign had previously made inquiries with other data vendors that didn’t yield relationships, including a firm called Cambridge Analytica, which is owned by a major donor to Trump rival Ted Cruz, and another called i360, which is owned by the Koch brothers' network. A source said the Trump campaign balked at the price tag associated with Cambridge Analytica’s services, while the Koch operation spurned Trump.

Through the end of September, Trump’s campaign had spent relatively little on voter data or outreach, according to its FEC reports. It showed $200,000 in payments for list rentals to the conservative Newsmax Media, and $47,000 to Targeted Victory, a leading GOP digital firm, as well as $153,000 on field coordinators in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina.

The FEC report covering the last three months of 2015, which will be released at the end of this month, will offer a much clearer picture of the campaign infrastructure built by Trump and his rivals.