How the Obama Campaign Polled

Mark Blumenthal takes a deep dive into the Obama campaign polling operation and notes they never conducted a nationwide survey.

Instead, it conducted polls across 11 battleground states (Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Michigan,
Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and
Wisconsin) at regular intervals throughout the campaign. These were supplemented by state tracking polls and parallel surveys to refine its microtargeting models.

Campaign manager Jim Messina says this gave him a deeper understanding of
“how we were doing, where we were doing it, where we were moving —
which is why I knew that most of the public polls you were seeing were
completely ridiculous.”