As Sen. Ted Cruz quietly positions his way to G.O.P front-runner ahead of rival Donald Trump, people must stop and ask: Wait, how did a guy some considered unelectable leapfrog Marco Rubio into the front of the pack? Simple: data mining and psy-ops.

In a story about the Cruz campaign’s new psychology-based playbook, The Washington Post reported that their strategy uses an innovative model that culls people’s Facebook “likes” to determine a potential voter’s personality.

In order to identify and target these voters, Cruz and his team had data-analytics experts and behavioral psychologists scan the profiles of nearly 150,000 people and build out several personality archetypes: “openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism.” (The Cruz campaign eventually revised the archetypes and added several more, like “stoic traditionalist” and “true believer.”) They then applied these archetypes to their “enhanced voter file” of potential voters—which contain tens of thousands of data points about an individual person’s likes, dislikes, and general disposition—to send these voters targeted ads based on the psychological archetype assigned to them.

It is called “psychographic targeting.” No, this was not a term made up by Philip K. Dick, but it does accurately describe the mind-game tactics at play:

An email will be tweaked based on the personality of the recipient. If a respondent were a “stoic traditionalist,” the conversation would be very direct and to the point. If a potential supporter was labeled “temperamental,” the language and approach would change, according to Chris Wilson, the campaign’s director of research and analytics, who has taken a leave from the polling firm he leads, WPA Opinion Research. “The tone would be inspiring and become more and more positive as the conversation progresses,” he said.

And, like Freddy Krueger, they use voters' worst fears:

The personality and political scores applied by the campaign are used to tightly tailor outreach to individuals. For example, personalities that have received high scores for “neuroticism” are believed to be generally fearful, so a pro-gun pitch to them would emphasize the use of firearms for personal safety and might include a picture of a burglar breaking in to a home.

And it's not limited solely to those who have liked Cruz. If you know at least one ardent Ted Cruz supporter in your life, and that person has a smartphone app built by the campaign to connect Cruz supporters, that app will scrape their phone for your contact details and beep boop beep, Ted Cruz’s computers will start sending you targeted ads, too.

The surprising thing about all this is Cruz’s own voting record on data mining: exactly four days ago, Cruz defended a vote that would have restricted the PATRIOT Act’s data-collection powers, though his arguments center on national security rather than a right to privacy. “More data from millions of law-abiding Americans is not always better data,” Cruz said Thursday during a speech at the Heritage Foundation. “Hoarding tens of millions of records of ordinary citizens, it didn't stop Fort Hood. It didn't stop Boston. It didn't stop Chattanooga. It didn't stop Garland. And it failed to detect the San Bernardino plot.”

What will the campaign do with the data after the election? “We will take great care,” Wilson told the Washington Post. But with Cruz suddenly in the lead in Iowa that might be a ways off yet. And the day will soon come when the Cruz campaign will send you an email with a photo of your ex-boyfriend, and the caption: "Time to break up with the liberal agenda, like you broke up with Greg. Ted Cruz 2016."