Trump's win can be attributed, at least in part, to Scott Walker and Peter Thiel

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Reached by phone, Oczkowski, director of product for the president-elect’s data team Cambridge Analytica, was exhilarated but not necessarily surprised. The polls, the pundits, and the data suggested otherwise, but Oczkowski says he and his crew knew weeks ago that Trump had a solid shot at the presidency. “This is not something that political intuition would tell you,” he says, “but our models predicted most of these states correctly.”

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“The general political assumption would tell you that an increase in old votes is good, a decrease in African-American votes is good, an increase in Hispanic vote is probably troublesome,” he says. “We came to realize the way folks were polling in terms of their samples and who they consider likely voters, it’s probably been incorrect.”

So the Trump team reworked its models according to those early turnout figures and saw Trump’s chances skyrocket in Rust Belt states like Ohio, Michigan, Iowa, and Wisconsin. “The rural vote is the story tonight,” Oczkowski says. “The amount of disenfranchised voters who came out to vote in rural America has been significant.”

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For Oczkowski, who worked for Governor Scott Walker’s primary campaign, such an oversight seems natural.

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