Standing before political and business leaders in New York last fall, Alexander Nix promised a revolution. … Mr. Nix’s little-known firm, Cambridge Analytica, claimed to have developed something unique: “psychographic” profiles that could predict the personality and hidden political leanings of every American adult.
“Of the two candidates left in the election, one of them is using these technologies,” Mr. Nix said, referring to Donald J. Trump. …
But a dozen Republican consultants and former Trump campaign aides, along with current and former Cambridge employees, say the company’s ability to exploit personality profiles — “our secret sauce,” Mr. Nix once called it — is exaggerated. Cambridge executives now concede that the company never used psychographics in the Trump campaign. CONT.
Nicholas Confessore & Danny Hakim, New York Times