Here are a couple of inside looks at the Obama Campaign and how the people who look at the numbers made adjustments - sometimes immediately - to their campaign in order to capitalize on incoming information (From Andrew Sullivan).
Michael Scherer:
In late spring, the backroom number crunchers who powered Barack Obama’s campaign to victory noticed that George Clooney had an almost gravitational tug on West Coast females ages 40 to 49. The women were far and away the single demographic group most likely to hand over cash, for a chance to dine in Hollywood with Clooney — and Obama.
So as they did with all the other data collected, stored and analyzed in the two-year drive for re-election, Obama’s top campaign aides decided to put this insight to use. They sought out an East Coast celebrity who had similar appeal among the same demographic, aiming to replicate the millions of dollars produced by the Clooney contest. “We were blessed with an overflowing menu of options, but we chose Sarah Jessica Parker,” explains a senior campaign adviser. And so the next Dinner with Barack contest was born: a chance to eat at Parker’s West Village brownstone.
Sasha Issenberg:
In 2004, the incumbent who won that tactical victory was George W. Bush, and as Democrats learned more about his campaign’s successful application of first-generation “microtargeting” procedures, they began to see their opponent’s powers as more mundane than mystical. Five weeks after Bush’s re-election, Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne diagnosed the Democrats as suffering from “Rove Envy” and described the longing the party had “for the strategic clarity and organizational acumen” Republicans showed in campaigns. Indeed Bush’s win had ratified what both sides recognized as a long-standing culture gap between the parties. Republicans were the party that was competent about politics, bringing the discipline of the corporate suite to the campaign war room. Democrats, who had resigned themselves to the reality of the Will Rogers quip about not being “an organized political party,” committed themselves to building a new infrastructure for innovation and collaboration among separate interest groups and rival consultants.
Tuesday night’s results testify to many dramatic changes, particularly demographic and ideological ones, that mark life in Obama’s America. But within the practice of politics, no shift seems more dramatic than the role reversal between the two parties on campaigning competence. Today, there is only one direction in which envy can and should be directed: Democrats have proved themselves better—more disciplined, rigorous, serious, and forward-looking—at nearly every aspect of the project of winning elections.
