Obama's digital campaign dashboard

Guardian:
Barack Obama's re-election campaign for the White House is poised to launch its secret weapon: an online tool that the campaign hopes will vastly increase its ability to mobilise volunteers and potential voters across the US.
The new tool, called Dashboard, is being seen as the possible Holy Grail of digital political organising, one that has eluded campaign chiefs for years. It is already being road-tested in several of the crucial swing states that Obama must hold onto if he is to remain in office.
The technology has been incorporated into the campaign's website, myBarackObama.com, and is expected to be made available to thousands of staff and volunteers across the country within the next 10 days. Its URL can be found through search, though it remains inaccessible to most Obama supporters until the launch.
For the past eight years, online experts working within both parties, but particularly within the Democratic party, have aspired to create the first fully formed digital campaign. That goal may now be within their grasp.
The hope of Dashboard is that data acquired by volunteers from voters canvassing in Ohio will immediately be synced with that gathered by those running phonebanks in New Hampshire and with the outreach efforts of volunteers at myBarackObama.com, giving campaign bosses a real-time master view of the president's re-election efforts throughout the country.
 They have put together a team of more than 100 statisticians, predictive modellers, data mining experts, mathematicians, software engineers, bloggers, internet advertising experts and online organisers at the Obama For America headquarters in downtown Chicago, which has been labouring since its start to craft a new generation of digital campaign tools. 
They are keeping specific details about Dashboard heavily under wraps for fear that they might lose the substantial advantage they now enjoy over their rivals in the Romney campaign. 
They have also been keen not to reveal the tool until it has undergone substantial testing by staff. All that the Obama team will say is that it represents a major step forward that could "make a huge difference in how we organise for 2012"....
Then it could just give them the bad news sooner.  It is unlikely that this campaign will be won with wizbang digital frou-frou.  The fundamentals of the race will be decided by people's attitude toward who has the bast chance of turning around the economy.  The Obama campaign has been losing ground in recent days by suggesting to voters that free contraceptives and gay marriage are more important to them than the 50 percent of young people without jobs and the substantial number of those over 50 without jobs.

This appears to be yet another distraction from the issues that really matter.

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