Background

The Obama campaign revolutionized the way large telephone voter contact programs were run. For most of the campaign calling cycle, Obama’s phone firms were order takers. The campaign had invested heavily in a targeting model and directed us all to make calls in twenty target states over the course of the summer and early fall to refine the model. The blueprints were designed in Chicago and then forwarded to consultants all over the country. The campaign was open to feedback and suggestion, but final scripting and targeting orders came from Chicago.

However, on Election Day, the calling program nerve center was preoccupied with other campaign tasks and marching orders were limited. Early turnout reports in swing states indicated that in NV and OH, there were areas of concern. The campaign turned to us with only hours to go to boost turnout in key areas each state.

The Obama campaign spent millions of dollars building their data model. They knew who they needed to target and what they needed to say. However, it all came down to turnout. Turnout among the modeled and identified supporters in key counties was lower than anticipated. The goal of the last minute calls was to browbeat our supporters into showing up at the polls.

Another highlight of these particular programs was our ability to adapt on the fly. With Chicago busy herding cats, we had add, cut, and substitute hundreds of thousands of records on the fly by pulling out areas with high turn-out and adding in areas with lower turn-out or other geographic areas.

In the end, Obama took Ohio by a 4% margin, and Nevada was even more comfortably his. In sum, the last-second approach supplied key votes to help seal the wins in these vital swing states.