Political scores steer Michigan voter outreach | JQJO

Mark Grebner, a 72-year-old Michigan data specialist, has spent decades building political scores that predict party leanings, tools now used by dozens of local candidates to target voters before Tuesday’s election. His databases can rate nearly any adult in Michigan—Eminem, Gretchen Whitmer and William Clay Ford Jr. among them—and are part of a wider industry where firms like L2 profile millions through hundreds of data fields. The rush to define people by a number can mislead; after a church shooting, a suspect’s Republican score fed speculation later undercut by reporting that pointed to anti-Mormon hatred, not politics.