Cook on 2014

At National Journal, Charles Cook sees GOP opportunities in 2014:

Obviously, past results are not a guarantee of future performance: Democrats are not going into the 2014 House midterms in an overexposed position, because they took such a beating in 2010, losing 63 seats and regaining only eight seats this year. It’s hard to see how Democrats could lose the 48 seats that the “in” party lost in 1958, 1966, and 1974. Also, with the way the current lines are drawn to form so many one-party districts, it would take a heckuva wave election to move a lot of seats in either direction. The House appears to have reached a kind of a partisan equilibrium; the GOP has a good chance of holding onto control for the rest of the decade, barring self-destruction resulting in a tidal wave.

But in the Senate, with only one Republican-held seat up (Susan Collins in Maine) in a state not carried by Mitt Romney by at least 8 points, the GOP seems to have little exposure. At the same time, Democrats have four seats in states that Romney carried by 15 or more points (Mary Landrieu in Louisiana, Mark Pryor in Arkansas, Jay Rockefeller in West Virginia, and Tim Johnson in South Dakota), with two more in states that Romney won by 14 points (Max Baucus in Montana and Mark Begich in Alaska) and two others in swing states (Kay Hagan in North Carolina and Mark Warner in Virginia).

Significantly, though, as Republicans painfully learned in 2012, overexposure doesn’t necessarily mean that Democrats will lose seats. This year, Democrats had 23 seats up to only 10 for Republicans, yet Democrats managed to score a net gain of two seats, defying all odds. In 2014, Democrats are once again overexposed, with 20 seats up compared with just 13 for the GOP. At least on paper, 2014 should be an opportunity year for Senate Republicans, assuming they don’t nominate horrifically flawed, weak, or self-immolating candidates, as they did, over the strenuous objections of party leaders and strategists, in 2010 and 2012

Post-Election Conferences

Politico reports on a conference at Robert J. Dole Institute of Politics at the University of Kansas on Thursday and Friday:

“The bottom line is that the Obama campaign [had] a candidate that was very hard to lay a glove on because he was somebody that the American people, by and large, had decided that they just liked,” said Romney’s deputy campaign manager Katie Packer Gage.
...
“It was one of the most frustrating things in our campaign,” Gage added. “In focus group after focus group, when you would sit down with this sort of narrow slice of voters — undecided female voters who had voted for Barack Obama in 2008 — they weren’t ready to vote for Barack Obama yet, but when we would test message point after message point after message point, there was almost nothing that would stick to this guy because they just liked him personally.”
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The Obama team believes that the selection of Paul Ryan cost Romney Florida, eating into his support among Cubans because of his past opposition to the embargo, galvanizing Sunshine State volunteers for Obama and raising doubts among seniors over what his budget plan might do to Medicare.

We needed to make this a state-by-state race, and we needed to take a state like Florida and turn it into a battle over each precinct,” [national field director Jeremy] Bird said.
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“Traditionally you win a primary and somebody drops out because resources just stall,” said Gage. “When we came out of our short-lived win in Iowa, you would have typically seen several candidates drop out at that point, but all of these candidates had one or two big, big donors that could keep them alive a while longer. And that’s what created this long slog effect.”

Gage said Romney’s inner circle thought frequently about how to persuade mega-donors like Sheldon Adelson and Foster Friess to stop financing the conservatives like Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum, who both forced Romney to the right.

Politico also reports on a meeting of GOP  operatives:

The Romney campaign is in the process of transferring all of its voter contact data to the RNC — a database that includes one million donor contacts and 2.2 active email addresses from theRomney list, as well as 300 pages of strategy memos and analytics information.

How to build on those contacts in the next four years and continue to grow the party’s email database is the central question facing the GOP now, said veteran GOP strategist Peter Pasi, a partner at Emotive who did digital work for Rick Santorum’s campaign, among others, and who attended Thursday’s meeting.

“How can we build structures … that can last 10 years and be refined no matter who’s the chairman and who’s in the White House?” he told POLITICO earlier this week, adding that the party needs to build “a digital infrastructure that reflects kind of a movement and a belief — not just [one] campaign.”

In addition to building that database, Republicans need to figure out how to standardize their voter information to include all kinds of data like the Obama campaign did in 2012. The Obama campaign was able to micro-target voters by cross-referencing such things as television-viewing habits and information collected from Facebook and email.

“The Obama campaign found a way to integrate social media, technology, email databases, fundraising databases and consumer market data,” said GOP digital strategist Vincent Harris, who did digital work for Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry in 2012. “That does not exist on the Republican side to that degree.”

CNN "Gut Check" asked IOP director Trey Grayson for lessons from the Harvard conference:

GUT CHECK: What are the three bullet points that future campaign advisers are going to take away from the lessons learned in the 2012 presidential campaign?

GRAYSON: 1. Even with all the analytics and data that campaigns have and use, the individual contact of going door-to-door or friend-to-friend on Facebook is still the most effective way to reach voters 2. Utilizing social media to reach those voters that you otherwise could not reach. For example, Obama supporters were Facebook friends with 98% of U.S. voters. 3. Diminishing returns of television advertising late in the campaign.

Adelson and Crossroads

The Center for Responsive Politics reports on Sheldon Adelson and his contributions to American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS:

In a last-ditch move, Adelson and his wife, Miriam, added another group to their list of beneficiaries and recently became first-time donors to Karl Rove's conservative super PAC American Crossroads.

The Adelsons combined to give American Crossroads $20 million on Oct. 19 and another $1.5 million each on Oct. 30, according to the Federal Election Commission. That $23 million is in addition to the millions they dropped on like-minded super PACs -- such as Restore Our Future, Winning Our Future and Congressional Leadership Fund. Various news reports have said that Adelson also gave tens of millions of dollars to American Crossroads' 501(c)(4) affiliate, Crossroads GPS, which doesn't have to disclose its donors.

The FEC's post-election reporting deadline was Thursday, and American Crossroads filed a report covering receipts and expenditures between Oct. 18 and Nov. 26. Almost all the donations came in by Nov. 6, Election Day.

The super PAC finished with about $1.5 million on hand after bringing in $37.3 million from individual donors in those three weeks. Overall in 2012, American Crossroads spent about $104 million on independent expenditures, $41.7 million worth of them in the most recent reporting period. Almost all of the money went to oppose Democratic candidates, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

More on the Digital Campaign

CNN reports:

CNN and Google held a forum yesterday that focused solely on the digital aspect of the presidential campaign featuring Romney Digital Director Zac Moffatt and Obama senior strategist Andrew Bleeker. Watch a portions of the exchange here, PART 1; PART 2.
We allowed Moffatt and Bleeker a chance to ask each other a direct question about the campaign, something that they might have wondered what the other one was doing in the heat of the political battle and here is an edited part of that answer we found fascinating:

Q. BLEEKER: What were your goals from a Facebook perspective? We were really actually wondering on the campaign, “Are they investing in non-battleground states? Why?”

A. MOFFAT: Some of the things you saw in our non-target states was very fundraising or list building specific … We also felt, looking at the metrics, the low-hanging fruit was still there. We also never really got to a point where we thought, we have to stop national advertising, because there are still people to be brought in. … I think that as we were looking at the vanity metrics as well, it was kind of funny the things that people fixated on again and again, and that’s why talking about this became such an easy number for us, because we were saying the same number of people were engaging online, despite the fact that at the end they were three times larger than us.

Q. MOFFAT: A lot of what we thought, when we looked at [your] advertising buys … was with more of an eye to earned media than it was sometimes to efficiency. When you did state takeovers, like in the Cleveland, Plain Dealer … the day of the early voting … I saw you guys driving more reporters to talk about it because it was a national buy. You know, you’re buying a set of geo-location, because everything we hear about team Obama it’s like geo-location. And if it doesn’t matter in the state, it doesn’t matter. And then they would go out there and thump their chest and say, you know, “You can see it.” Were you actually seeing the results across the board?

A. BLEEKER: No question, when we bought the Des Moines Register on Iowa primary day, and the [New Hampshire] Union Leader that was definitely for the media. [The media] all covered the … Iowa thing like that was really smart. And I think we got more play on that [and] frankly donations from it because everyone went to the site to click from it than I’ve ever seen from any other kind of our media buys. But I do think that stuff was sort of throw away. It was cheap. … The early vote stuff couldn’t have been more essential to our campaign. We knew we were winning the campaign pre-election day. You know, when all of the sudden we can look at the folks who voted early and that starts to line up with our turn out models, we felt pretty good. So we spent a large portion of our actual budget on what I call field support and mobilization and much of it was driving to some metric. The takeovers did do that.

Restore Our Future's Last-Minute Money

Restore Our Future spent a lot of money, but to what effect? The Center for Responsive Politics reports:

The pro-Mitt Romney super PAC Restore Our Future raked in $22 million in the weeks between Oct. 18 and Nov. 6, the date of the election, according to the group's latest filing with the Federal Election Commission.

And its outlays were even more eye-popping: More than $45 million, almost all of it for ads. All told, Restore Our Future spent more than $142 million in independent expenditures in the race, more than half of it against President Barack Obama and the rest against his Republican rivals for the nomination.

The last-minute donors to the super PAC included Miriam and Sheldon Adelson, who gave $10 million to help Romney's losing presidential effort. That brought the Adelsons' total investment in Restore to $30 million for the election cycle.

No other contributors even came close, although there were several other $1 million-plus gifts: Larry Ellison, Oracle's CEO, sent $3 million; Houston Texans chair Robert McNair chipped in $1 million; and the holding company Renco Group, which has mining and other subsidiaries, also gave $1 million.

Enthusiasm: Meh!

From Resurgent Republic [emphasis added]:

Key subgroups of President Obama's winning coalition including Hispanics, young voters, and unmarried women outperformed their 2008 turnout levels, even though these cohorts exuded less enthusiasm to get to the polls than Governor Romney’s core supporters. Many variables influence election turnout, and the impact of candidates and campaign messages should not be overlooked. This analysis and corresponding infographic focuses on voter enthusiasm on the eve of the election and the turnout percent change in recent presidential contests. Voter enthusiasm alone is not enough to significantly alter the demographic trends of the electorate.

 18-29: Despite having low enthusiasm levels throughout the election, voters 18-29 had a 6 percent increase in turnout compared to 2008, up one-point overall to comprise 19 percent of the electorate. President Obama won the youth vote by more than 20 points (60 to 37 percent), but he did so by a smaller margin than 2008 (66 to 32 percent). Latino voters 18-29 propelled the increase among the youth vote, expanding to 4 percent of the overall electorate, while whites and African Americans equaled their 2008 levels.

Unmarried Women: the "war on women" is somewhat overstated as Republicans won among white women by a greater margin in 2012 than 2008, 56-42 and 53-46 respectively. Yet white women's share of the electorate is down 1 point since 2008, 3 points since 2004, and 14 points since 2000. As a key part of center-left coalition, unmarried women increased their share of the electorate from 2008 to 2012 by 10 percent, up two points overall to 23 percent. With two-thirds support in November, Democrats hold a commanding lead among this growing segment of the electorate.

 Hispanics: The fastest growing minority group had an 11 percent increase in turnout compared to 2008, up one-point overall to 10 percent of the electorate. Republican support reached a high point in 2004, but has dropped by nearly 20 points over the past two presidential cycles. Meanwhile, the political influence of this voting bloc will increase exponentially as 50,000 Americans of Hispanic descent turn the age of 18 every month for the next two decades.

 African-Americans: Turnout among the black community equaled the sizable percentage increase seen in 2008. From 2004 to 2008, the African-American vote saw an 18 percent change, going from 11 percent in 2004 to 13 percent in 2008. Unlike President Obama’s other coalition groups, African American voters were the most enthusiastic to turnout of all voting groups.

 Seniors 65 and Older: Governor Romney did better among seniors by a net of four points compared to 2008. Yet despite being one of the most enthusiastic voting groups, seniors' share of the electorate remained the same as four years ago. In fact in four of the past five presidential elections, voters 65 and older comprised 16 percent of the electorate, with the lone exception of 14 percent in 2000.

 White Evangelicals: this reliably conservative voting bloc recorded high enthusiasm levels during 2012, yet their share of the electorate equaled 26 percent in the past two presidential elections. Despite this equilibrium, Governor Romney won these voters by 78-21, a net 7-point improvement compared to 2008. This margin is identical to 2004.

 Whites: Not only did Governor Romney outperform 2008 levels among all white voters by a net of 8 points, he also earned a positive net swing among each age group compared to four years ago: 18-29 (+17); 30-44 (+5); 45-64 (+9); and 65 and older (+4). Yet these margins were not enough because the 2012 electorate was less white, decreasing to 72 percent overall. There was a decline in the white vote among 30-44 year olds, from 20 percent in 2008 to 18 percent in 2012. Yet the overarching trend of a less white electorate will continue as Hispanics, Asian Americans, and other minority groups increase their political participation and the white vote continues to age (white seniors increased to 14 percent in 2012). 

GOP Campaign Problems: People, Tech, Centralization

Reid Wilson writes at National Journal:

In the annals of the conservative blogosphere, the creators of Project ORCA, an as-yet-unknown group of Romney and outside staffers, are part of the reason Republicans lost. It's something of a parlor game among Republican strategists, especially those involved in the technical side of the business, to guess which of their colleagues is at fault for ORCA's failure. It's a fool's errand; according to up-to-date tallies compiled by The Cook Political Report's David Wasserman, Obama beat Romney by more than 4.6 million votes, a margin far greater than even the best GOTV program could make up.

But it's clear that Obama's team was generations more advanced than Romney's. In a close race, turnout makes a difference; the investments Democrats have put into their technological tools have paid off, and will continue to do so.

Some Republicans worry that their trouble goes deeper than the bells and whistles of a nifty computer program. The party faces a lack of high-quality campaign managers, strategists with the track record of running and winning statewide elections who haven't left the business to open their own consulting firms.

The Hill reports:

President Obama's re-election campaign ran "the greatest digital operation in the history of politics," Zac Moffatt, digital director for Mitt Romney, said Wednesday. "I don't begrudge them."

In contrast, Moffatt said he thinks his team struggled the most with the rapid need to "scale out" and staff up following the extended GOP primary. "Build bigger" is his advice when it comes to digital teams for future presidential campaigns.

"We ran out of runway," he said, and described his dream scenario as one where he could put together a dream team of people at least two years in advance.

"If I could do it again, I'd do it as an incumbent," he laughed.

With the election over, digital strategists for both presidential campaigns seemed more than willing to put any animosity behind them at a panel co-hosted by CNN and Google in Washington, DC.

And the spending was centralized. PR Watch reports:

The hundreds of millions that mega-donors gave to Super PACs and dark money nonprofits in 2012 largely failed to produce a return on investment, with Barack Obama reelected and Democrats gaining seats in the U.S. Senate. However, a small cadre of media consultants, advertising experts, and strategists still reaped huge profits from the 2012 election, based on an analysis by the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD).

In 2012, the total spending of outside groups -- the Super PACs and dark money nonprofits which spend money to influence elections, but do so separately from campaigns -- amounted to about $1.3 billion. CMD (publishers of PRwatch.org) estimates that more than $482 million in outside spending, about a third overall, ultimately passed through just six media companies: ad production shops Mentzer Media and McCarthy Hennings Media, direct mail giant Arena Communications, online advertising firm Targeted Communications, Karl Rove-affiliated Crossroads Media LLC, and a mysterious Democrat-aligned media group called Waterfront Strategies. Some of these companies used the money to produce ads, others to purchase the slots where the ads ultimately aired, others to send ad mailers. Industry experts tell CMD that media buyers typically take a 10 to 15 percent commission on ad buys, but consultants involved in ad production or mailers may be paid an even greater percentage.