The New York Times, November 2025
Friends ping Mark Grebner about their love interests. Politicians rely on him to help target voters. Reporters ask whether the suspect in a mass shooting is Democrat or Republican. In us-and-them America, where many people are eager to render flash judgments on the basis of a person’s political choices, Mr. Grebner tells them the score — literally.
For two decades, Mr. Grebner, 72, has been a pioneer in assembling vast databases that can generate a single number to predict which party a voter is most likely to support. As campaigning for Tuesday’s election entered the final stretch, dozens of candidates for mayor and city councils across Michigan were using Mr. Grebner’s political scoring to target persuadable voters by knocking on their doors and bombarding them with mailings.
