Messina: Obama Won On The Small Stuff

[DonViejo]

Romney aide admits: “We thought the game would be one thing, and it ended up being another.”

Barack Obama’s campaign manager, Jim Messina, said Friday that the president’s reelection was won “on the micro stuff.”

"Politics too much is about analogies and not about whether or not things work," Messina told BuzzFeed. "You have to test every single thing, to challenge every assumption, and to make sure that everything we do is provable."

"That's why I love numbers," he said. "Because you know good or bad whether what you're doing is working."

Messina spoke to BuzzFeed Friday after sharing a panel stage with Romney aide Brian Jones at a conference for the International Association of Political Consultants at the Hilton New York. There, Messina and Jones evoked a contrast between one campaign that had the advantage on macro-messaging, and another that invested millions in analytics and metrics.
"We had to win this on the micro stuff," Messina said.

more:
http://www.buzzfeed.com/rubycramer/messina-obama-won-on-the-small-stuff-4xvn

[libdem4life]

1. Smart Politics. As in Smart Business it's the magic of good Marketing and Sales

One sets the stage, the other does the dance. In Obama's case, damn smart Marketing Department (Messina and Silver, et al), but The Prez still Made the Sale.

[TwilightGardener]

2. I always forget to give credit to Messina for his genius.

Thank you, Jim Messina.

[alcibiades_mystery]

3. Messina is a genius

Obama campaign critics? Not so much.

[cleduc]

4. This guy Jones can't even read exit polls

"Jones argued that despite the Orca crash — and clear wins by President Obama on issues like health care and the middle class — Romney "won on the vision for the future, on being a strong leader, on the deficit," he said."

http://www.cnn.com/election/2012/results/race/president#exit-polls
Romney barely led on the deficit issue by 2 pts and the economy by 1 pt (both within the margin of error and therefore not a definitive "win&quot but Obama led on the rest of the questions.

The only question involving "strong leader" was:

"Most Important Candidate Quality"
Answers were:
Shares my values : 27% Overall 42% Dem 55% Rep
Strong leader : 18% Overall 38% Dem 61% Rep
Cares about people: 21% Overall 81% Dem 18% Rep
Vision for future : 29% Overall 45% Dem 54% Rep

Jones of the Romney campaign is misreading the answer on the "strong leader" which is focused on which quality was most important to voters. The question was not which candidate was the stronger leader. Among those whose most important candidate quality was "strong leader", Romney had more Republicans chose that answer but the others who picked other qualities didn't provide an opinion of who they thought the stronger leader was.

Put another way 18% thought "strong leader" was the most important candidate quality. 7 of the 18% were Dems and 11 (the balance) of that 18% were Reps. 82% didn't weigh in on that question. Nor did any say if they actually thought Obama or Romney was the stronger leader.

More specifically for example, the 21% folks who thought "cares about people" was the most important quality, (81% of whom were Dems), didn't say who they thought the stronger leader was.

The same applies to the "Vision for the future" answer.

No wonder Romney's folks had trouble interpreting the polls. Their key guys couldn't read them (or doubled down with another lie).