For Obama Campaign, TV Shows Were the "Tell"

The day after the election, the Washington Post published a lengthy piece that pulled the curtain on the Obama campaign and how it turned out the vote.

One detail: TV viewing habits. Scott Wilson and Philip Rucker write, "Some of that expensive new data included viewer habits, collected by cable companies, that provided clues to voter traits and preferences. In a race where middle-class female voters were courted by both camps, the Obama campaign advertised heavily on the CBS sitcom “2 Broke Girls,” according to a Yahoo analysis of Federal Elections Commission data. The campaign bought detailed voter updates, issued every two weeks.

"The tools allowed campaign officials to determine — on a house by house basis, rather than on a Zip-code-by-Zip-code basis – how people were likely to vote and whether they were likely to vote at all."