Nate Cohn: “Does the decisive Republican victory mean that the Bannock Street Project, as the Democratic field operation was named, failed to live up to its promise?”

“The preliminary and qualified answer is that the Democratic field effort was probably a success. An analysis of precinct and county-level returns, supported by exit polls and limited voter file data, suggests that the turnout in key Senate battlegrounds was generally more favorable for Democrats than it was in 2010. When it wasn’t, the Democratic turnout still seemed impressive when compared with the states where they did not make significant investments, like Virginia or Maryland.”

“The evidence for a fairly successful Democratic turnout effort is straightforward. Whether judged by county or by precinct where available, turnout tended to increase most over 2010 levels in Democratic-leaning counties in core battleground states. The drop-off in Democratic counties and precincts compared with 2012 — a presidential year, when turnout is higher — was generally more modest in the Senate battlegrounds than elsewhere.”

Pew Research: “Among those who were registered to vote but chose not to, two-thirds (67%) gave reasons related to lack of time: 35% had work or school conflicts and 34% were too busy, ill, out of town or simply forgot. Two-in-ten (20%) registered non-voters say they either didn’t like the candidate choices or issues on the ballot, didn’t care about this election or didn’t have any or enough information to vote. And 10% of non-voters reported having a technical reason for not voting, either having missed the registration deadline, recently moving, or not have transportation to the polls.”

The Daily Beast has learned that “in the crucial swing states of Iowa, North Carolina, and Colorado, the DSCC made a decision in September to put an increased emphasis on persuasion, talking undecided voters into supporting Democratic candidates rather than turning out its base voters. In other words, instead of going after the type of people who reliably vote Democrat but don’t reliably show up on Election Day, they focused on voters who were somewhat more likely to vote but hadn’t firmly made up their minds”

“These undecided, persuadable voters were identified via a computer model that ranked and ordered voters as targets of persuasion not just through volunteer contact but through direct-mail paid media as well. The problem was that, at least in Iowa, this model was imperfect… Initial data indicate that more than 60 percent of voters in this group who actually turned out on Election Day supported Republican candidates.”

Morning Line: “Final numbers are still being tallied, but at this point it looks pretty clear that turnout in these midterms was the lowest overall in 70 years. Turnout of the voting-eligible population was just 36.4 percent, according to the projection from the United States Elections Project, run by Dr. Michael McDonald at the University of Florida. That’s down from the 41 percent that turned out in 2010. You have to go all the way back to 1942 for lower numbers when turnout in that midterm was just 33.9 percent. They had a pretty good excuse back then — many adult-age Americans were preoccupied with fighting in a world war.”

Wonk Wire: The impact of voter ID laws on election turnout

“At Republicans headquarters in Washington, top strategists predicted days in advance that the GOP would win the Senate and gain House seats despite polls suggesting many races could go either way,” the Washington Examiner reports.

“The party points to the $100 million it has spent overhauling the way it campaigns, finally giving it a data and analytics-driven operation that can compete with the Democratic machine built by President Obama.”

“Just as importantly, McNulty and his staff decided to do what the Democrats did and focus their energies almost entirely on getting out the vote among groups highly likely to be Republican but don’t usually vote in midterm elections. Final statistics are still not in, but McNulty predicted that the GOP would maintain its historic midterm turnout advantage because the party didn’t waste resources reaching out to people who were already reliable Republican voters.”

Marc Ambinder says it’s a myth “that Democrats do poorly in midterm elections generally. In 1998, they did not. In 2006, they did not. In 2002 and 2010, Republicans gained seats in both chambers. Setting aside the structural engineering of politics — the gerrymandering of districts, for example — there are some things the Democrats did, and did not do, that hurt them.”

“The first is that they broke their promise on immigration. To be sure, Republicans win the obstructionist trophy on immigration reform. But Obama all but promised to act in their stead. He did not… Had Obama made some big gesture accompanied by strong executive action to pull out of the shadows millions of Latinos, his party might well have rewarded him. Not just Hispanic voters, but other Democratic voters who supported his position. If you don’t give someone a concrete reason to vote, something they can hang their minds around, then they’ve got to be persuaded by an appeal to their fears.”

“Democrats know that President Obama remains in charge. They know that the GOP can’t do anything awful for the next two years. Democrats tend not be motivated by judges and cultural issues; their base was not set up that way, the Republicans were. Democrats are also confident that they’ll keep the presidency in 2016, and if they pay attention to politics, they know that 2016 is cyclically shaping up to be a better year for them. So — really — why vote? Or, put another way, why go out of your way to vote?”

Nate Cohn says Democrats will spend millions “to target Democratic-leaning voters over the next six months. And you would think that if anything could fix a turnout problem, it would be the vestiges of President Obama’s vaunted ground operation.”

“But not even the most sophisticated and well-funded turnout effort can fix this problem. Strong turnout operations can help Democrats at the margins. The Democratic turnout problem, however, is not marginal.”