What's Really Happening With Obama's Voter Data

It's conventional wisdom that Democrats lucky enough to get the Obama campaign's data files are going to have a massive marketing advantage in upcoming elections. And when Organizing for Action, President Barack Obama's data-savvy post-2012 campaign operation was established in January, it seemed to answer the question on every politico's mind: Where will the data go? But a direct transfer of the coveted Obama data from campaign to nonprofit is not so simple -- not by a long shot.

Exactly where the Obama 2012 data lives is complex, in some cases still undetermined, and mostly obscured. The receptacle for some of the information -- which included voter-file data, social-media data, ad interaction and measurement information, email data, polling data, volunteer-profile data and competitive intelligence on GOP contender Mitt Romney's media buys -- remains unsettled in part because Federal Election Commission rules on coordination and campaign financing prevent the old Obama for America campaign from porting everything lock-stock-and-barrel to the new OFA that spun out of it.