Respond to prefers-color-scheme dark in app web views

Follow section front redirects in Spectrum

Enable NLP source in PCS for load testing

Switch off the News Alerts Survey Widget when we have enough responses

Poll to determine if new LUF updates are available

Allows the winning A/B test variant to be turned on without Spectrum deployment

Show infinite scrolling sections in Assembler MultiView

Show option for NLP article summaries in Action Bar

Show NLP summaries collection recirc on article pages

A general feature flag for Recipe Features that aren't yet released

Feature flag for media team features that aren't yet released

Use new Orca video player for preroll plugin in Spectrum

Show the snow tracker (instead of the heat tracker) on Spectrum

An unexpected sight to behold: Ted Cruz working bipartisan deals

Narrative of Trump snoozing in court takes hold — much to his annoyance

Manafort will no longer take on Republican convention role

Tens of thousands in Georgia protest Russian-style ‘foreign agents’ law

Israeli operations in north and south Gaza force displaced to flee again

‘Nothing left’: At least 300 dead as flash floods devastate Afghanistan

‘Bunker mentality’ at Columbia lit protest spark that spread nationwide

A mystery illness stole their kids’ personalities. These moms fought for answers.

The greatness — yes, greatness — of the Planet of the Apes

Eighth-inning decision burns the Nats in a 4-2 loss to the Red Sox

Nats win opener at Fenway behind Patrick Corbin and a lockdown bullpen

Commanders rookie DT Johnny Newton needs a second foot surgery

5 big travel lessons from an accomplished conservationist

Cruise ship drags dead whale into New York, prompting investigation

The case for eating at Italian gas stations

Kristi Noem’s dog killing is pure Southern gothic

Claire Messud turns her family’s history into a masterpiece

Joseph Epstein, conservative provocateur, tells his life story in full

The urgent air defense lessons of April 16 

Are smartphones destroying childhood? It’s complicated.

In the campaign against Donald Trump, do the ends justify the means?

Fooled by AI? These firms sell deepfake detection that’s ‘REAL 100%.’ 

Apple apologizes for iPad ad after blowback 

Google’s new ‘Find My’ device network is useful but a stalking risk

Bishop vanished. His species can still be saved.

VCU grads walk out during Gov. Youngkin’s speech

Northern lights glow worldwide

Carolyn Hax: Keep scrolling seven hours per day, or give therapy a try?

Ask Amy: Mother isn’t accepting of her gay son

Ask Amy: What do I say about my former walking buddy who yelled at me?

Courtroom photo ban adds to hurdles for Trump trial journalists

Israel’s shameful ban on Al Jazeera

Checks, not sex, and other takeaways from Trump’s New York hush money trial

I used to dismiss my mom’s advice. Then I found a note she wrote before she died.  

Photos of his mom at lunch are a balm people didn’t know they needed

Dog hit by car loses leg, is adopted by firefighter who helped her

Trump trial live updates: Trial resumes with Michael Cohen likely to testify this week

Inside Hillary Clinton's campaign, she was known as Ada. Like the candidate herself, she had a penchant for secrecy and a private server. As blame gets parceled out Wednesday for the Democrat's stunning loss to Republican President-elect Donald Trump, Ada is likely to get a lot of second-guessing.

Ada is a complex computer algorithm that the campaign was prepared to publicly unveil after the election as its invisible guiding hand. Named for a female 19th-century mathematician — Ada, Countess of Lovelace — the algorithm was said to play a role in virtually every strategic decision Clinton aides made, including where and when to deploy the candidate and her battalion of surrogates and where to air television ads — as well as when it was safe to stay dark.

The campaign's deployment of other resources — including  county-level campaign offices and the staging of high-profile concerts with stars like Jay Z and Beyoncé — was largely dependent on Ada's work, as well.

[Trump’s White House win promises to reshape U.S. political landscape]

While the Clinton campaign's reliance on analytics became well known, the particulars of Ada's work were kept under tight wraps, according to aides. The algorithm operated on a separate computer server than the rest of the Clinton operation as a security precaution, and only a few senior aides were able to access it.

According to aides, a raft of polling numbers, public and private, were fed into the algorithm, as well as ground-level voter data meticulously collected by the campaign. Once early voting began, those numbers were factored in, too.

What Ada did, based on all that data, aides said, was run 400,000 simulations a day of what the race against Trump might look like. A report that was spit out would give campaign manager Robby Mook and others a detailed picture of which battleground states were most likely to tip the race in one direction or another — and guide decisions about where to spend time and deploy resources.

The use of analytics by campaigns was hardly unprecedented. But Clinton aides were convinced their work, which was far more sophisticated than anything employed by President Obama or GOP nominee Mitt Romney in 2012, gave them a big strategic advantage over Trump.

About some things, she was apparently right. Aides say Pennsylvania was pegged as an extremely important state early on, which explains why Clinton was such a frequent visitor and chose to hold her penultimate rally in Philadelphia on Monday night.

But it appears that the importance of other states Clinton would lose — including Michigan and Wisconsin — never became fully apparent or that it was too late once it did.

Jenny Starrs

Clinton made several visits to Michigan during the general election, but it wasn't until the final days that she, Obama and her husband made such a concerted effort.

As for Wisconsin: Clinton didn't make any appearances there at all.

Like much of the political establishment Ada appeared to underestimate the power of rural voters in Rust Belt states.

Clearly, there were things neither she nor a human could foresee — like a pair of bombshell letters sent by the FBI about Clinton's email server. But in coming days and weeks, expect a debate on how heavily campaigns should rely on data, particularly in a year like this one in which so many conventional rules of politics were cast aside.

Stanford University, BA in Political Science

John Wagner is The Post's national political breaking news editor. He previously was a reporter on the breaking news team. Prior to that, John covered the Trump White House. During the 2016 presidential election, he focused on the campaigns of Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. John also chronicled Maryland government for more than a decade.

John Wagner

The Washington Post

Biden administration

The Fix

The 202s

Polling

Democracy in America

Election 2024

Politics

prism://prism.query/site-articles-only,/politics&limit=20

Post Politics from The Washington Post is the source for political news headlines, in-depth politics coverage and political opinion, plus breaking news on the biden administration and White House, Congress, the Supreme Court, elections and more.

prism://prism.query/site,/politics/the-fix&limit=6