In the early hours of November 7, 2012, Mitt Romney’s wife Ann cried inconsolably and asked his campaign staff, “How did this happen?” According to Mark Halperin and John Heilemann’s campaign chronicle Double Down, his vice-presidential nominee Paul Ryan was equally confident. Romney had penned an acceptance speech but NOT a concession speech. That’s self-assurance. What did happen?

If you have watched footage of aerial bombing in World War II or even Vietnam, you see massive planes drop lots of bombs on enemy targets. The idea was that if you drop enough of them something will hit the target. It is sometimes called Saturation bombing.

Then in the Gulf War in 1991, television viewers were amazed to watch Allied planes utilize ‘smart bombs’ that were aimed directly at a site almost like a video game. They were or seemed to be devastatingly accurate.

Barack Obama’s reelection effort was assisted by a campaign technique called “Microtargeting.” They practically perfected this technique in swing states (then) like Ohio as the country began to descend into the political polarization we have today. There is a small number of undecided and/or persuadable voters, and they have to be found and sold.

When Obama was elected in 2008, the wonderfully sarcastic news site The Onion ran a headline “Black Man Given Nation’s Worst Job.” The ‘Great Recession’ (of 2008) had already begun, and American military forces were bogged down in Afghanistan and Iraq. “Hope and Change” sounded great on the campaign trail, the president-elect was inheriting a S#S%-show.

Using analytics, the Obama campaign invested resources heavily not only in key states but data driven specific areas. They designed digital, print, radio, and television ads specifically for a precise segment of the population. Your clicks are tracked and were even then. That information is mined and processed just like taking minerals from the ground. I recently clicked on one ad for a pair of shorts and after that saw dozens of ads. It’s used in business all the time. Big Brother IS watching.

Obama’s ground game was effective in terms of both quantity and, more importantly, quality. His staff opened 225 offices in the key states of Florida and Ohio. Computer models identified voters on a 1-100 scale of voting preferences and sent volunteers door to door to build relationships with those voters who could be influenced. They just didn’t knock on doors; they knocked on the right doors.

Demographics were also put under a microscope. The American populace is constantly shifting. Subtle changes every four years occur as individual states gain and lose voters and electoral votes. The Latino electorate is on the rise. Obama’s team developed tailored ads in Spanish targeted at those people.

In about a week, the American electorate will go to the polls. In 2016 and 2020, about 120,000 people in those infamous swing states chose the president. This time it looks just as tight. The Biden campaign was building a ‘ground game’ that Kamala Harris inherited. They have 353 field offices and 2,500 staffers in those battleground states. Will that make a, the, difference? We’ll soon find out…