Originally Posted by
lardy
Yes, you're missing something. It's more sophisticated than that.
Plenty of people are rooted in their beliefs, in this case either leave or remain. But you target the floating voters, that's what has happened in General Elections for decades - invest your resources where it will make a difference. There's no point trying to win a safe seat.
Once you get hold of the data trail that people leave on the web, social media and web history, then you can find the susceptible ones and target them. If 80% of the 'news' they see is slanted one way, and it's backed up by bots seemingly making it the majority opinion, then these people will likely be motivated to use their vote this way. And they'll share the stories with just one click; now the stories are coming from people they trust.
There are rules that political parties and UK media have to follow during election campaigns. Those rules don't affect groups outside the UK, so yes GEs can certainly be affected.