The Secrets of the 2012 Campaign

An interesting article that provides insight into the Obama and Romney campaigns. 

Below are a few takeaways that stuck with me:

47% Comment
Once the 47 percent comment came out, Rhoades said Romney showed his character under the pressure.... But while the video may have stopped Romney’s ability to cure his aloof and out-of-touch image, the Obama strategists say it was not the boon that people thought at the time. “Those people were not moving toward Obama but moving away from Romney,” said Simas of the changing in polling in the aftermath. These were voters who would eventually move back to Romney. “No one believed us at the time,” says Obama deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter. “We were saying that as this 2 percent moved away from Romney it wasn't ours. The race was closer than people thought at the time."

Polling
Advisers had predicted that Romney would win decisively. That confidence was based largely on their polling, which was based on a generous interpretation of the electorate.

The Obama campaign, by contrast, had several different streams of polling information coming in. This allowed Obama’s camp to more accurately understand what the undecided electorate was thinking and what their voters believed, so they could hone the president's message and the scripts volunteers would use on the doorstep when canvassing.

Conventions
The net benefit after the two conventions was enough to give the Obama team confidence to engage heavily in Florida, a state they were not going to fully commit to until they saw how things stood in early September. 

Facebook
In 2008, the Obama campaign did an analysis that concluded that 99 percent of the people the campaign contacted by email voted for Obama.  Of Barack Obama's now 33 million Facebook fans globally, they are friends with 98 percent of the U.S.-based Facebook population."

Check out the full article for more!