Politics

Is The App That Pumped Up Brexit Actually Trump’s Secret Weapon?

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Is uCampaign a digitized secret weapon for Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump in his “Get-out-the Vote” effort for Tuesday’s presidential contest with Democrat Hillary Clinton?

Nobody can know the answer until all the votes are counted, but what is already certain is that uCampaign was the main digital tool for the “Leave” campaign that decisively won a wholly unexpected Brexit victory last summer.

In Britain, uCampaign’s impact was so stealth that traditional polling companies confidently predicted the “Remain” side would win by six percentage points. In the end, however, “Leave” won by four percentage points, a 10-point spread.

uCampaign, the technology platform behind Trump’s new smartphone app, calls its work “modern digital activism” that enables a campaign to do “universal door-to-door canvassing.”

The app identifies where people live, puts them in touch with other like-minded activists, and motivates them to take action by awarding points for any positive activity they do for a candidate like sharing their address list, doing volunteer work or attending a Trump rally.

Get-out-the Vote efforts are key to the election’s outcome for Trump. Besides the turnout muscle behind the Clinton campaign, organized labor has a massive, built-in machine to deliver votes, especially in urban areas.

Thomas Peters, uCampaign founder and CEO, told TheDCNF that there have been 145,000 downloads of the Donald Trump app and the campaign has sent out 300,000 peer-to-peer messages and tens of thousands more are being sent during the closing hours of the contest.

Overall, there have been more than 2 million “actions” since Donald Trump launched the digital campaign with an August 26 Tweet.

“We’re getting a big uptick in traffic.  It’s amazing how many people have cued into the election only 24 or 48 hours before, so we’re trying get those people quickly into the pipeline,” Peters said. He calls his unseen digital campaign a “21st century campaign.”

In the Brexit upset victory, the polls reported the campaign had lost even before a single vote was cast. “People felt very alone and were depressed,” Peters said. The uCampaign effort was launched only 21 days before the voting.

The Trump app is generating better results now than it did in the UK and “is our most popular and most active app,” he said. “The goal of the campaign was to make sure people didn’t feel alone, then a one-step repository for volunteer activity.”

The first level is “apprentice,” obviously a reference to Trump’s TV talk show. It has picture is a coffee mug.

Other levels include the “Trump Train, “America First,” “Make America Great Again” and the “Big League.”  That final image is of the White House.

“You can instantly see people who are Trump supporters and give them encouragement,” Peters says.  “You can also choose to become friends with each other and then it becomes a ‘messaging app’ for Trump supporters around the country.”

Peters claims the app is not solely a millennial toy, but something that spans generations from 18 to 60.

He calls his technology something that is an “emerging market” tool within the conservative community. In addition to Brexit, uCampaign has helped the Cruz and Paul campaigns, as well as the National  Rifle Association.

“There is a desire among conservatives to use cutting edge technology like smartphone apps and a desire from right-leaning candidates and advocacy groups to use this technology as well,” he says.

Want to test drive it?  Here’s the Trump app: donaldjtrump.com/app

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Tags : brexit
Richard Pollock