How data-mining helped lead to an Obama victory

>>> 45 past the hour. joining us now, "time" managing editor rick stengel is here with the latest issue of "time."

>> hi, guys.

>> what could it be?

>> what could it be? the re-election of barack obama , a slightly chastened barack obama , his terrific speech on the night of his election, we've got more work to do. it's a fantastic double issue with many great stories including our history of the campaign and 100 objects which we've been working on for months and months, and including a story which you guys, i guess, were obliquely referencing this morning, michael scheerer's story about the data-mining operation at obama headquarters where he got a lot of details that hadn't been reported before including the fact they did 66,000 computer simulations a night about the election. they had a sample of 29,000 people in ohio . one half of 1% which is a gigantic sample that they used over and over . and what they did finally was unite the databases that they had had from the first campaign, the fund-raising database, the polling database, all into one gigantic database. that explains it all.

>> yeah.

>> we've heard much about --

>> the president helped a little bit. the president was helpful.

>> he was putting a lot of information in the database, too.

>> well, i think, though, the president didn't even know.

>> no.

>> how large this operation was.

>> yeah.

>> it was remarkable. and a lot of data mining , like you said, is just unprecedented in american politics .

>> absolutely unprecedented. and by the way, it's used more in industry, you know, proctor & gamble , i bet, has a fantastically gigantic database. and that's part of what was smart about the obama campaign is they used things that had been working in business for them, and the scale of it was just astonishing.

>> you have to always keep in mind that it's even more complicated than that. that's obliquely referencing in terms of the president. you've got all that data and data mining and you're also calibrating message, calibrating advertising against message, calibrating advertising and message against what you're seeing in terms of voter movement. all the focus groups they did in addition to all the regular polling they did. it's a very complicated thing that's going on.

>> yes.

>> and then policy decisions that the president was making in order to inform the message that would then drive the advertising and the microtargeting and all that stuff. you know, it's a complicated operation.

>> yes. in fact, the piece starts out with the notion that they discovered that the single thing that got more people to contribute particularly women was this opportunity to have dinner with george clooney . so they just doubled down on that. and that's what gave them the idea to do dinner with sarah jessica parker here in new york.

>> right.

>> wow.

>> we'll get what to watch for in 2016 in just a second. i noticed mark halperin 's piece, you can't underestimate the auto bailout and how it turned out to be fortuitous on so many levels especially given the fact that mitt romney ended up being --

>> yes, and it helped them in that demographic group that the president has always struggled in, as all democrats have struggled with in the last several cycles is white men. there were white men in ohio that were more inclined to vote for the president than before because of the auto bailout.

>> and you also, i think, are going to have a lot of republicans, a lot of people inside the romney camp questioning the ad at the end of the campaign that just took tremendous liberties with the facts of the auto bailout.

>> no. and by the way, one function of people having been barraged with so many thousands of ads is they do become experts on the ads and they do have a way of evaluating them. if there's one things americans know how to do is watch commercials and evaluate them. i think that ad in particular struck a wrong chord with people.

>> you think about ohio where, you know, there was all this debate about how much romney 's supposed momentum was stopped by the hurricane. in ohio , that ad, having the heads of chrysler and gm come and repudiat e publicly the campaign in ohio in the last week probably did more damage to romney in ohio than anything having to do with sandy.

>> you could also take that to other states, too. michigan. in wisconsin and other states where it had an impact across the midwest. it really had big blowback. so faces to look for in 2016 ? you guys have already --

>> i think you're going to show something up there. our fantastic photographer did portraits of -- there's hillary clinton . let's see who else comes up next. marco rubio . jeb bush . governor chris christie . you see right there in profile. all these folks came by the office to pose for pictures. joe biden . and again, in our world, people start talking about 2016 , the day after the election in 2012 and folks like andrew cuomo are undoubtedly thinking about their future so we wanted to give a portfolio to readers to see who's coming up. condoleezza rice . bobby jindal . i don't see joe scarborough there. he didn't pose.

>> you said everybody there agreed to come in and pose for photos. how was that set up? i'm just curious. how was the ask of that set up.

>> we said for the election issue we're going to do something that's looking ahead to the next four years and we put together a list of people and -- not everybody cooperated.

>> i was going to say.

>> who didn't cooperate?

>> who didn't cooperate. i don't recall.

>> and why? i think that's interesting.

>> what's fascinating is, these people sat down. that is a tip of the hat to "time" and your readers if they're thinking about running for president. jeb bush who has been reluctant publicly. if he's coming to sit down to get this portrait taken and jeb bush is thinking about running. as is hillary. as are the rest.

>> that's an assumption you can make, joe.

>> i think we have very safe assumption if you told them come in, we'll take your picture on our election special looking forward . right?

>> is that how the ask went out?

>> the ask was, we want to photograph people who will be influencing the republican party and the democratic party over the next four years.

>> that's fascinating!

>> that's a hedge. i can tell a hedge when i see one.

>> i don't mind hedging. hedging is find. i just don't want to put anyone in a position where they say, hey, i'm not running for president in 2016 . that's not what you guys said.

>> yeah. well --

>> that's fascinating!

>> if you want to see who's thinking about running for president in 2016 and who actually came to "time" and actually sat down, i think condi rice is fascinating.

>> she did not come to the office. we went and shot her out in california.

>> rahm emanuel -- i don't know rahm was an ambitious man. i never saw that coming.

>> bobby. all of our friends are here. marco. look at that. martin.

>> martin o'malley. how surprising.

>> very good.

>>> rick stengel, this is fascinating. thank you so much.

>> thank you, guys.

>> i'm sure you thank us.

>> get the issue on the president's re-election and who really, really, really wants to be