Barack Obama presidential campaign, 2012

Early stages

On January 20, 2009, Barack Obama was inaugurated as the 44th President of the United States. On April 4, 2011, President Obama officially announced his candidacy for re-election. The announcement was made via an online video titled "It Begins With Us", posted on his campaign website. The President also filled out official forms with the FEC at that time.

President Obama did not face a significant challenge in the Democratic primaries, with no other candidate on the ballot in all but seven states. On April 3, 2012, Obama won the Maryland and District of Columbia primaries, giving him more than the required 2778 delegates to secure the nomination. On April 30, 2012 the campaign announced that its slogan would be "Forward".

The campaign was based in Chicago in One Prudential Plaza, instead of in Washington, D.C., where all other modern incumbent presidents had their re-election headquarters. The decision to base the campaign outside of Washington was said have been taken so as to ensure grassroots support for the re-election.

Fundraising

The campaign began accepting online donations on April 4, 2011, the day Obama announced his candidacy. In the first 24 hours after online donations began to be accepted, over 23,000 online donations of $200 or less were made. President Obama headlined his first campaign fundraiser in April 2011 in Chicago. He also headlined fundraisers in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York in April 2011. On April 29, 2011, it was announced that Matthew Barzun, the United States Ambassador to Sweden, would serve as finance chairman. Many sources claim that the campaign may be the first campaign in U.S. history to raise more than one billion dollars. In March 2011, Campaign Chairman Jim Messina asked a group of 450 top donors to raise $350,000. During the second fundraising quarter of 2011 (the first of the campaign), the campaign raised a record amount of $86,000,000. As of May 3, 2012, Obama and his team have held 130 fundraisers.

More than 550,000 individuals donated towards the campaign in the second quarter of 2011, which is a much larger number than the 180,000 individuals who donated to Obama's 2008 campaign during the first half of 2007. From the beginning of the campaign to December 31, 2011, more than 1.3 million individual donated to the campaign. The LGBT community had donated a record amount so far to the campaign. As of March 31, 2012, the campaign had raised $191.7 million.

On May 10, 2012, Obama attended a fundraiser in the Los Angeles home of actor George Clooney, which raised over $15 million. The fundraiser was initially estimated to raise about $10 million, but after Obama's historic announcement of his support for same-sex marriage, the amount went up significantly. Many believed that the LGBT community and activists would donate historic amounts after the announcement.

Obama's campaign is also supported by Priorities USA Action, an independent expenditure PAC founded by several former Obama campaign officials, but legally prohibited from coordinating with the candidate or his campaign.

Technology

The engineering investment of the Obama 2012 campaign was unprecedented, under the leadership of CTO. Harper Reed. Reed helped build a team of developers from tech companies like Twitter, Google, Facebook, Craigslist, Quora, Orbitz and Threadless. This approach— hiring technology workers from the tech startups rather than the political realm— was novel. A central component of that work was Project Narwhal, a centralized database of electoral information.

Dan Wagner served as Chief Analytics Officer, running the 54-person analytics team out of a windowless office known as the 'cave.' His teams predictions were remarkably accurate to the actual election results.

Getting out the vote

The Obama campaign was highly effective in getting out the vote, in using technology to identify voters, and in capitalizing on growing segments of the voting population. "President Obama won re-election, not by going after independent voters, but by going after emerging groups in the U.S. population. By race, age and gender, voters made clear that America is made up of many parts, and the Obama team captured more of them, and delivered more of them to the polls."

Hurricane Sandy

Hurricane Sandy affected the presidential campaign as well as local and state campaigns in storm-damaged areas, as it hit the New England coast a week before the election. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, one of Mitt Romney's leading supporters, praised President Barack Obama and his reaction to the hurricane and toured storm-damaged areas of his state with the president. Obama signed emergency declarations on October 28 for several states expected to be impacted by Sandy, allowing them to request federal aid and make additional preparations in advance of the storm. According to Karl Rove and Bill Clinton, the hurricane and its aftermath ended up helping Obama; the hurricane drew attention away from the campaigns and Obama was able to take a bipartisan position and be "presidential". The event sparked debates and discussions on climate change, which had been ignored by both parties prior to the event.

Election

On November 6, 2012, Obama was re-elected for his second term as President of the United States. He won 65,899,660 popular votes and 332 electoral votes, with two states less than in his 2008 victory. In his victory speech in Chicago, he promised to "sit down with" Mitt Romney to discuss a bipartisan future for the United States.

Campaign staff and policy team

Many key people from the successful 2008 campaign returned. David Axelrod, who was in charge of Media in 2008 and who worked in the White House as a Senior Advisor to the President from 2009 until 2011, returned to Chicago to work on the campaign as the top communications official. Jim Messina, who worked in the White House as Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations from 2009 until 2011, moved to Chicago to serve as campaign manager. Matthew Barzun, the United States Ambassador to Sweden, served as finance chairman. Jennifer O'Malley Dillon, who worked at the Democratic National Committee as an executive director, was named deputy campaign manager. The other deputy campaign manager was Julianna Smoot, who was the 2008 finance director and was briefly the White House Social Secretary. Ben LaBolt served as national press secretary. LaBolt worked for Sherrod Brown's 2006 Senate campaign, as Obama's senate press secretary, for the 2008 campaign, as a deputy White House Press Secretary, and for Mayor of Chicago Rahm Emanuel, Katie Hogan and Adam Fetcher, who each worked on the 2008 campaign, served as deputy press secretaries. Rahm Emanuel was expected to play a role in the campaign. Emanuel served as White House Chief of Staff from January 2009 until October 2010 and worked on President Bill Clinton's successful 1992 and 1996 campaigns. Rufus Gifford served as Finance Director, Elizabeth Lowery served as Deputy Finance Director, Jeremy Bird served as National Field Director, Marlon Marshall served as Deputy National Field Director, Mitch Stewart served as battleground state Director, and Elizabeth Jarvis-Shean served as Research Director. Katherine Archuleta was named political director.

Campaign co-chairs

In February 2012, Obama for America (OFA) announced its list of campaign co-chairs:

Other initiatives

Opinion polling

In a March 2011 Pew poll, Obama held an advantage of 47% to 37%, similar to the lead that former President George W. Bush held over an unnamed Democrat in 2003 and larger than the lead former President Bill Clinton held over an unnamed Republican in 1995. An August 2011 Rasmussen poll found that in a hypothetical race between President Obama and a generic Republican, 48% backed the generic Republican and 40% backed the President.

In February 2012, Obama held a sizable lead over both Mitt Romney (53–43) and Rick Santorum (53–42) nationally. By the end of March 2012, Obama's lead over Romney had narrowed to approximately 2.4% (46.6–44.2) nationally. An August 2012 CNN/ORC poll found that Obama led Romney 52% to 45%. A Fox News poll conducted nearly the same time placed the two candidates 49% to 40%, with Obama in the lead.