Romney's Data Cruncher

It worked. Nationwide, Bush won 11 percent of the black vote, a two-point increase from 2000; in Ohio, he won 16 percent, an improvement of seven percentage points. Bush won Ohio by 118,601 votes, or approximately 2 percent of the more than 5.6 million votes cast for the two major-party nominees.

In New Mexico, Gage's microtargeting discovered a segment of 19,000 lower- and middle-class, middle-aged Hispanic women whose children attended public schools. That group was strongly resistant to Republican candidates -- just one in five said they would back a GOP candidate -- but about half said they would back Bush. Why? Because 80 percent of the group were strongly supportive of his No Child Left Behind education legislation.

The Bush campaign made a targeted strike with a message focused on his push for testing and standards in public schools. It focused particularly on the 6,000 women in the group who were all but certain to vote. Again, the goal was not to win Hispanics or even Hispanic women but rather to minimize the Bush campaign's losses in this particular demographic.

On Election Day 2004, Bush carried New Mexico by 5,988 votes. It was the only state that he lost in 2000 and won four years later.

In response to Gage's success, Democrats have made their own attempts at microtargeting, and they think they have caught up in the technology, if not the organization, needed to apply it. Republicans worked to hone their microtargeting techniques under the single roof of the RNC-Bush campaign, but Democrats have been experimenting with a patchwork of smaller, less centralized efforts, according to Ken Strasma, founder of Strategic Telemetry, a Democratic firm.

Gage doesn't sound worried. What he does is as much art as science, and he never stops tinkering with his models. "Part of the challenge is to constantly attack what you're doing and try to do it better," he said.

Targeting Iowa for Romney in '08

Eighteen months ago, Gage made the trip up to Boston to meet with Myers. At a Beacon Hill restaurant, the two old friends chatted about Romney's potential as a presidential candidate and microtargeting's ability to help deliver him the GOP nomination.

Over the next months, Gage and Myers talked from time to time about how microtargeting might best be used to make a difference in a presidential primary. One Saturday last fall, Myers, Gage and Will Feltus, a member of National Media Inc., the company that handles Romney's advertising, gathered for a final bull session.

At issue was whether microtargeting could find meaningful -- and measurable -- differences in a primary electorate that was Republican to begin with and similar in its demographic and ideological traits. After hashing out the details on maps and graphs, Myers and the rest of the Romney team reached a decision. "The question was whether you could differentiate between the eight kinds of chocolate," she said. "I became convinced that the power of microtargeting was enhanced by segregating a generally homogenous universe."

Myers's conversation, like that of her candidate, is more from the business world than from the political one. She likes to talk about the "seamless web" that allows the campaign not only to "see at any given time what the left hand is doing" but also to use the "right hand [to] tell us what impact it has."

But the Romney campaign is decidedly circumspect when it comes to divulging details of exactly what Gage and his team are doing, other than to say the process of interviewing individuals has begun in Iowa.

Romney communications director Matt Rhoades is only slightly more specific when asked about the campaign's plans for microtargeting. "Our microtargeting strategy is tied to the calendar, and we have developed microtargeting models in Iowa," he said.

Developing that strategy has placed Gage in a central role in the campaign. Myers describes Gage as its "strategic orchestra leader" -- he oversees polling, media and online operations and works to ensure that every part of the Romney operation is working in concert.

Gage is more humble about his role, calling himself a "planner." He said, "I have always believed in Eisenhower's observation: 'In preparing for battle, I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.' "