Donald Trump in Ohio. Credit:Bloomberg Trump's voter suppression operation is revealed in a report by a Bloomberg team, which was given exclusive access to the San Antonio facility, where some of the data experts are veterans of the successful leave campaign in Britain's recent Brexit vote. It coincides with notes of caution about the accuracy of the polls that have Clinton surging – by 5.7 points in the Real Clear Politics average of national polls on Thursday. A key element is how the polls factor in likely turnout – in 2012, the assumptions made some polls more favourable for GOP candidate Mitt Romney than was reflected in the actual vote. Essentially, Trump argues that the published polls misrepresent his voter support – and just in case they don't, his data team is trying to mess with the actual turnout on election day. Much news reporting focuses on "get-out-the-vote" operations, sophisticated efforts by the campaigns to get people to the polls in a country in which voting is not compulsory, but explaining the targeting of African American's in Trump's "don't-go-vote" operation, Bloomberg reports:

"In San Antonio, a young staffer showed off a South Park-style animation he's created of Clinton delivering the 'super predator' line [using audio from her original 1996 sound bite], as cartoon text popped up around her: 'Hillary thinks African Americans are super predators.' The animation will be delivered to certain African American voters through Facebook 'dark posts' – non-public posts whose viewership the campaign controls so that, as Parscale puts it, 'only the people we want to see it, see it.'" According to Bloomberg, the voter suppression effort was a response to an early campaign gaffe – a failure by both the Trump team and the Republican National Committee to mobilise and register as voters Trump's crucial support demographic – America's 47 million eligible white voters without a college education. So if Trump had not massaged his supporters to go to the polls, they would have to massage Clinton's key demographics to stay away. Bloomberg explains: "They're aim[ing] at three groups Clinton needs to win overwhelmingly: idealistic white liberals, young women and African Americans. Trump's invocation at the debate of Clinton's WikiLeaks e-mails and support for the Trans-Pacific Partnership was designed to turn off Sanders supporters. The parade of women who say they were sexually assaulted by Bill Clinton and harassed or threatened by Hillary is meant to undermine her appeal to young women. And her 1996 suggestion that some African American males are "super predators" is the basis of a below-the-radar effort to discourage infrequent black voters from showing up at the polls - particularly in Florida… "The aim is to depress Clinton's vote total. 'We know because we've modelled this,' says the [campaign] official. 'It will dramatically affect her ability to turn these people out'."

All will be revealed on election day, but the Trump campaign is a massive rejection of campaigning blueprints that political strategists have devised based on decades of experience. Trump has few on-the-ground staff, he rejects the notion that he should invest millions of dollars in private polling when a slew of media houses are regularly polling and he his TV advertising is sparse. Loading Some professional eyebrows were raised by a particular line in the Bloomberg report, in which one of a team that has very little professional campaign experience, is quoted: "There's not really that much of a difference between politics and regular marketing… If you're running a burger shop, you have to let people know that your burgers are good and get them into your shop to buy them." Maybe it's not that simple. Remember Herman Cain, the pizza guy who flamed out in the Republican primaries in 2012? Burgers and pizza might be in the same league, but voters?