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Yep. There is an Obama for America office not too far from me. Three months or so ago, I saw a guy in 2012 Obama shirt and button in the grocery store at 9:00 at night. It was clear from his appearance, he was just wrapping up a long day. They had crews of workers in the trenches cranking it out months ago micro targeting each area. Obama won our county by a much larger margin than I would have expected. They won in the GOTV, and we need to quickly evolve there. The Romney campaign made massive improvements on the digital side over four years ago, and they did develop a much more advanced microtargeting database. They need to take that and evolve into our side’s version of OFA. The one thing in world I can give credit to the Obama era is that they have taken campaigning to a whole new level using technology and grassroots organization.

There was an interesting thread discussing the same themes HERE.

The poster shares an email he got from a Republican friend living in Germany. The friend relates how dems got US citizens living in Germany to participate in the elections and what he found out about about their operations in the states, eg,

"1.That the Democrats clearly have a more effective team operating in the field. For example, my debate opponent from Democrats Abroad had been to many, many Democrat Party training events in DC and had a direct line to vast numbers of not only politicians but also access to an entire administrative support network at party headquarters. All during the night, he knew in real time from party HQ specific exit poll data for strategic zip codes and indicated that the local leaders were reacting in real time to rush in any potential reserves of voters who may not have already voted in those precincts. In other words, they have "troops" in the voting field with multiple levels of leaders and a powerful admin support. If need be, these "troops" will hand carry a voter in to secure the vote.

2) They have an incredible amount of specific data about not only their own constituents but about the demographics of their voters, potential voters, where they live, their occupations (note I didn't say work) , their affiliations (ie churches, unions, social clubs)---and how to get them to actually commit the act of voting. All of this on a house to house basis for strategic precincts. Here I don't mean general data like X% are in the union but specifics like which specific churches in Cleveland will help organize car pools to get voters in specific neighborhoods into the voting booth. Or making sure that specific local union offices are coordinating their efforts with other union halls, social clubs and church groups in specific areas to achieve a huge turnout in their precincts. Or what powerful local community leaders can be counted on to bring their flock into the voting booth. And all of it is gamed out well in advance of the election. In their world, they are very, very, very close to their voters and handle them directly just like their vision of the Nanny State handling citizens. The data is provided by their field operations and continually updated at all times---not only at election times. And furthermore, they seem to have a surprising amount of specific demographic data about Republican voters--or at least about strategic concentrations of them. On one level, this capability could be comparable to the depth of market data that a route salesman would be expected to know about his territory and customers. On another level, this deep capability covers at least all strategically important geographic areas and is strategically managed with the professionalism of military intelligence resources.

3) They have a very effective communications system which coordinates efforts of Nr 1 and Nr2 from the head of the snake all the way down to street level "troops". It works reliably and their team knows how to use it

4) SInce the 2000 election, I have been aware that their team routinely takes advantage of vast pro democrat sentiments overseas to gain a) fundraising from abroad through donations to groups like Democrats Abroad , b) foreign citizens who volunteer to operate programs like phone banks, websites, social media, mailings which can be managed from Europe for example but used to back up the election effort stateside, and c) large armies of energetic Europeans (ie students but also sometimes retirees) who take "vacations" to the USA during vote season and "volunteer" as free manpower to help field operations of democrats.

All very relevant observations about how the other side gets the job done (and get a load of that point number 4!)

Our side needs to realize that the American electorate does NOT just automatically lean conservative anymore, and won't as matter of sheer habit go to the polls and vote republican. We can laugh at the deadbeats and druggies in the ghettos all we want, but it seems the other side figured out a way to get them to the polls and vote. And they did it, for the most part, legally. The lethargy and lack of imagination on our side is just as dangerous as Obama's radicalism.