A new link between the Trump campaign and Russian intelligence that's more evocative than definitive

[applegrove]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/01/08/new-link-between-trump-campaign-russian-intelligence-thats-more-evocative-than-definitive/?utm_term=.488345ed6525

By Philip Bump at the Washington Post

"SNIP....

So what does it tell us? The language is vague: Manafort shared “polling data with Mr. Kilimnik related to the 2016 presidential campaign.” That doesn’t necessarily mean polling data from the Trump campaign. There was certainly a lot of polling done in 2016 but, interestingly, not much by the Trump campaign — which spent more on promotional hats than on opinion surveys. Manafort might have shared publicly available polling information with Kilimnik, which nonetheless raised questions for Mueller’s team. (It probably goes without saying, but that investigators asked Manafort about the sharing of polling and flagged his response as false indicates that they were interested in this particular exchange.)

Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that it was internal Trump campaign polling. The timing on this is iffy; the first polling expense logged by the campaign in 2016 came at the end of August. Earlier that month, Manafort was fired, after allegations of illicit payments from Ukraine became public. But, again, let’s assume that’s what it was.

What might Russia have learned? It's hard to say without knowing what the polling said or was focused on. Perhaps it revealed particular messages that were effective with apathetic or persuadable voters. Perhaps it revealed particular places where the campaign hoped to get a boost.

We know something now that we didn’t know in July 2017, when McClatchy first reported on Russia’s interference efforts: They don’t seem to have done much. There were a number of targeted ads and a broad range of campaign pitches, but the ad targeting was fairly scattershot, heavily focused on areas where the presidential contest wasn’t particularly close, and the messages deployed by the Russians were not particularly sophisticated.


....SNIP"

[applegrove]

1. Let us park the Trump collusion thing until we know more. I'm tired

of being let down. Manafort yes. Trump we don't know.

[C_U_L8R]

2. Do we know what they mean by 'polling data'

It could be anything from anonymous opinion poll data (what they want us to think) to actual names, numbers, addresses, demographics, psychographics, social grids, etc. Just the sort of thing Russia could (did) weaponize.