The Romney campaign’s ground-game fiasco
The system was different from Narwhal. It was designed to allow Romney poll watchers, in real time, to identify likely Romney supporters who still had not shown up at polling stations on Election Day. By uploading the names of people who had voted, the computers back in Boston could figure out who still needed to be targeted and turned out.
At least that’s the way it was supposed to work. But on Tuesday, it became clear that the deployment of Orca was doing more harm than good. …
The Romney high command had cloaked the system in secrecy to maintain what it hoped would be a true competitive turnout advantage. But by limiting the number of people with access to Orca, the campaign was not able to train its field operatives to use it or do the necessary beta-testing to work out the kinks that typically plague new software. …
“We were sold on Mitt as this brilliant manager and turnaround artist,” said John Ekdahl, one of those poll watchers in Florida who used Orca. “But it was a snake-oil kind of program. I say this as a Web developer. This was throwing money at a product that just didn’t work.” Ekdahl first published his critique of Orca on the conservative website Ace of Spades. Other poll watchers who asked not to be named had similar complaints.
The mood grew increasingly grim on Tuesday as Romney officials realized that their supposed state-of-the-art answer to the Chicago’s turnout juggernaut was a bust.
Blowback
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How many of you are really buying this BS about Romney’s ground game sucking and GOP turnout sucking?
Too many stories, editorials, and what not for me. The fix was in on this election.
bgibbs1000 on November 10, 2012 at 8:06 AM
Red State: Romney got conned by consultants
Wethal on November 10, 2012 at 8:07 AM
Team Romney should have known that ORCA could never overcome the awesomeness of the narwhal.
Just for fun, outline the mechanics of “the fix” for me. Can I assume that Ohio’s Republican Secretary of State was in on it?
urban elitist on November 10, 2012 at 8:13 AM
In a way, yes, but it was because the Obama campaign discarded any notion of winning over the American people and went all in on choosing the electorate. I’m not sure if Romney’s GOTV effort was really worse than average, but it’s clear that Obama won by pressuring the uninformed to vote Democrat.
Count to 10 on November 10, 2012 at 8:24 AM
Also, I have yet to see Gumby since the election. Can we assume that he was part of the Democrat’s vote suppression apparatus, as many have suggested?
Count to 10 on November 10, 2012 at 8:26 AM
Just not buying the media line of piss poor ground game by Romney. What gets me is that a lot of people who are normally skeptical of what he media reports and says are buying it hook, line and sinker.
While I have no proof of undercounting of Romney’s vote totals, especially in sing states, there’s plenty of circumstantial evidence and most should be able to figure out know what that is.
bgibbs1000 on November 10, 2012 at 8:45 AM
I cannot tell you the mechanics. Because it probably is not a real conspiracy. Actors all do things that benefit themselves. When the system is set up to reward the most actors for a certain outcome, a larger number of actors will work towards making that outcome occur. Obama is spending money like there is no tomorrow, and there likely will not be 6 to 8 years out from now. About the only thing that will save people is if they are so well off that they can survive and in fact take advantage of inflation. I think many Government officials are getting payoff from all this spending.
McCain threw the election to Obama to begin with. Now we have the amazing Romney throwing the election to Obama. Romney never should have won the primary. But back in January every single right of center media outlet targeted, froze and destroyed every opponent of Romney. The low turnout numbers for the Primary reflect that the vote was suppressed. All these people are getting something in return for keeping the people in crisis mode, either more readership for Hot Air and Drudge, and I got no idea what the pay backs are, or if the reasons for the top ticket people’s actions are more from the fact that they are threatened with death.
Look at General Paetreus (really never liked that guy, war is not about winning hearts and minds, it is about forcing the other side to give up in total). They probably held his affair over his head for months. It is possible they have even more damaging dirt on him and that is why he is refusing to testify to congress. They let out the little thing to force him out, and held back worse stuff to hold over head head.
astonerii on November 10, 2012 at 8:46 AM
Yeah, maybe you can get the “Unskewed Polls” guy to work on that.
inklake on November 10, 2012 at 8:52 AM
No, there’s no evidence.
I can see the idea of people’s short-term interests aligning in a way that makes a certain outcome more likely — the hot new meme on the left is that the GOP was mis-served by a conservative media “keeping the people in crisis mode” to drive hits and ratings, and distracting the movement from what was really going on.
What I can’t buy into is the idea that it was coordinated in anyway. Too many egos and too little discipline.
On Paetreus, I’m having a hard time seeing any up side for the Obama Administration in forcing him out. As long as he was working for the Administration he was never going to do any real damage during testimony, and he was a great brand name warrior for the Obama people to point to when someone called them squishy on terrorism.
Not to mention good at his job.
urban elitist on November 10, 2012 at 9:00 AM
A Spanish Company with ties to George Soros tabulated the votes for approximately half the states. Couple that with what were told by all media outlets about high enthusiasm by republicans to vote, and I’m very suspicious.
You can believe what you want and based on your past postings most know where you stand anyway.
bgibbs1000 on November 10, 2012 at 9:07 AM
Anecdotal – I was asked by the McCain/Palin campaign to go to another state to help out in the week before the election (on my own dime). That office was managed atrociously by a rude young out-of-state college kid but there were local and out-of-state volunteers helping out. I was never even contacted by Romney/Ryan except for up to three mailers a day asking for money. That is all…
Fallon on November 10, 2012 at 9:20 AM
Yeah, I’m not buying any of this.
The media and talking heads really do seem to have an abundance of post-election memes going right now don’t they? It’s almost as if they’ve know for some time what the outcome would be, and had plenty of time to draw them up and co-ordinate a fast and furious roll-out.
We’re being Rick-rolled folks.
Or should it be “folks”? It seems this is a word that’s come to have a very flexible definition, as it can be used to describe American citizens worried about the price of college tuition as well as RPG-toting Islamist terrorists attacking an American consolate.
“Consolate” – another word with a definition that has become very flexible.
sartana on November 10, 2012 at 9:27 AM
It wasn’t the election day turnout that mattered; it was the early voting turnout that the mattered. Being able to get hidebound, base voters to the polls 4-6 weeks before Nov. 6th is what democrats have mastered.
Early voting crowds were the whole point behind the vicious demagoguery in Obama’s ‘kill Romney’ strategy.
Which ledes me to ask, why even bother having an election ‘day’ if states can enact early voting??’
locomotivebreath1901 on November 10, 2012 at 9:31 AM
mittens lost …get over it…a loser candidate with a loser campaign…end of story
Pragmatic on November 10, 2012 at 10:00 AM
It’s who counts the votes that matters. You can program a computer to do anything with numbers and that’s all voting machines are, they’re computers subject to the same infiltration and corruption of data as any other computer is.
bgibbs1000 on November 10, 2012 at 10:01 AM
Interesting. very interesting. I’ve heard stories about Romney being surrounded by a wall of consultants for a year. All sounds plausible.
runner on November 10, 2012 at 10:02 AM
It is coming from so many non-media source you can drown in them. Typical consultant run operation, typical consultant developed technology. Not all consultancies are the same, mind you. Some have really exceptional personnel with great delivery skills, except it appears that those did not end up working for Romney
runner on November 10, 2012 at 10:10 AM
So too did the “attack on capitalism” meme.
astonerii on November 10, 2012 at 10:57 AM