From Politico:

In the past two presidential cycles, the Republican national voter file allowed them to more efficiently locate, communicate with and galvanize voters. Democrats, by comparison, relied on a disjointed compilation of national and state party data files that varied widely in quality. To boot, said one DNC analyst, many of their files would vanish after each election year.

For Democrats, the shift to one “solid voter file” is “transformative,” said Ben Self, the DNC’s director of technology.

“Whether it is microtargeting, regular targeting, neighbor-to-neighbor knocking on doors, or volunteers making calls,” Self said, “all these vital campaign activities are built on a national voter file and were not available in 2000.”

Or in 2004, when Republicans took full advantage of their advances in technology.

For all the talk this campaign season about the use of the Internet, which is an important component don’t get me wrong, I have to say this news alone is the most important of technology and its potential impact this season. The Internet has been great for Democrats in both raising money and collecting the data needed to populate the above mentioned list. Until now that was pretty much useless in comparison to the Republicans get-out-the-vote-machine.

As nice as blogs and tweets and YouTube videos are, they are nothing if voters don’t go to the polls come election day.