One Metric
During a webinar organised by HP Vertica, Chris Wegrzyn - Director of Data Architecture of the DNC, explained that in order to do this, they had defined three major ways to influence the campaign:
Registration: increase the amount of voters who were eligible to vote;
Persuasion: Convince voters to vote for Obama;
Turnout: Increase the turnout on the actual Election Day.
Each potential swing-state voter would be assigned one number, ranging from 0-100. There were four different scores based on the three different ways to influence:
The likelihood that they would support Obama;
The prospect that they would show up at the poll;
The odds that an Obama supporter who was an inconsistent voter could be nudged to the polls;
How persuadable someone was by a conversation on a particular issue.
This metric would be at the heart of the campaign and would influence the message send to a swing-state voter.