I just read a fascinating article about this program that the Romneyites were using, called The ORCA Project.
I'm not going to lie, I was sort of thinking that the Romney ground game would be much better and more effective than it was. Well, I suppose it was better than John McCain's ground game. In any case, apparently the Romney camp had been relying on this sophisticated get-out-the-vote operation they created, called ORCA.
The project operates via a Web-based app volunteers use to relay the most up-to-date poll information to a "national dashboard" at the Boston headquarters. ... Another key component to Project ORCA is state-of-the-art dashboard. For the past several months, a "brain" has been built into this dashboard and it will take in, analyze and recommend actions on the millions of pieces of incoming data. In the fast-paced environment of an Election Day command center, having this programmed "brain" will alert decision-makers to key findings and suggest reallocation of resources.
The most up-to-date poll information? Like the poll done by a Republican shill that has you down by 5 points in Pennsylvania? But please, don't let reality get in the way...
The success, though, would have to depend on volunteer troops united by a Web-based smartphone app. Romney himself called these forces, armed with the technology, an "unprecedented advantage on Election Day.
This faith in algorithms led Romney for President communications director Gail Gitcho to tell PBS, "At 5 o'clock, when the exit polls come out, we won't pay attention to that ... We will have had much more scientific information just based on the political operation we have set up.
Is it just me, or does this smack of the whole "creating your own reality" meme from the George W. Bush era? But, unfortunately, in an election, you can't actually create your own reality. In any case, I would have to say that if there was an algorithm sorely missing from ORCA's calculations, it was how hard Mittens was going to get crushed among Latino voters. I mean, he got his freaking ass handed to him by Obama among Latinos.
Now let's contrast ORCA with the Obama campaign's more reality-based approach:
Political campaigns these days live or die by the analytics, and PBS pointed out the marine metaphors carried over to the Obama camp, which nicknamed its process Dreamcatcher and Narwhal, and then shifted to a vote-tracking system named—of all things—Gordon. Yet an Obama spokesperson also cast doubt on the opposing party's strategy, telling the Huffington Post, "In a national campaign, what additional things are the headquarters really going to do to move resources ... ? Will an additional auto-call last minute really make a difference in a market like Northeast Ohio, which has been saturated for three months full of auto-calls?"
It would seem that the entire philosphy of the two sides reveals stark differences: The Romney campaign apparently counts a robocall as a "voter contact." The Obama campaign counts a voter contact as a voter contact. This reminds me of a diary I read here a couple weeks ago where an Obama canvasser came across a Romney canvasser who counted dropping literature on someone's doorstep as a "voter contact." No wonder they couldn't beat us!
Here is a link to the article: http://news.yahoo.com/...
Update: I forgot this gem from the article:
Early in the evening, one aide said that, as of 4 p.m., Orca still projected a Romney victory of somewhere between 290 and 300 electoral votes. Obviously that didn't happen. Later, another aide said Orca had pretty much crashed in the heat of the action. 'Somebody said Orca is lying on the beach with a harpoon in it,' said the aide.