The Romney campaign’s equivalent was apparently some system called “Orca”, which involved volunteers on the ground sending information to a central location about the conditions that they saw. It wasn’t as extensive, and now we know that it gave misleading information to the campaign.
Two other things to keep in mind:
(1) The Republican leadership has been really really invested in the “fake it ’till you make it” school of persuasion: if you act like a winner, this will persuade the people who want to get behind a winner, and then you will win.
(2) Democratic operatives have known for decades that the demographic groups more likely to vote for them are also the groups that are less likely to vote at all. The Clinton-era solution to this problem was to pitch a message that was more likely to resonate with the population that was already voting; the Obama-era solution is to get more of those unlikely voters into the voting booths. Republicans don’t have as much headroom to improve their turnout.
Two other things to keep in mind:
(1) The Republican leadership has been really really invested in the “fake it ’till you make it” school of persuasion: if you act like a winner, this will persuade the people who want to get behind a winner, and then you will win.
(2) Democratic operatives have known for decades that the demographic groups more likely to vote for them are also the groups that are less likely to vote at all. The Clinton-era solution to this problem was to pitch a message that was more likely to resonate with the population that was already voting; the Obama-era solution is to get more of those unlikely voters into the voting booths. Republicans don’t have as much headroom to improve their turnout.