Gus Bickford, a DNC National Committeeman and voter file expert, says that in the 2004 contest, the DNC had reams of data on voters, but had done little "modeling" to piece it together. "It was like buying all the pieces for a jet engine, but not telling anyone how to put it together."

For example, the DNC outsourced data "cleansing" of state-level voter information in 2004, but got shoddy results, with many records having incorrect phone numbers and lacking multiple addresses that are often necessary to locate voters. State parties that tried to use that data afterwards, in some cases abandoned it altogether because it was unreliable, he said.

Following the DNC playbook for that election year, the group also stopped cleansing data for all but about 18 "swing states," writing off the rest to focus resources where the party felt they mattered most, according to Bickford.

In comparison to 2004, the new system was fast enough to digest updated voter information from all 45 participating states and cleanse it two or three times before Election Day. That meant that state-level operatives got useable data for all 45 participating states, said Bickford and Sullivan.

"The thing I noticed while I was driving around from state to state is that the volunteers were so much happier," said Sullivan. "The difference between phone bank volunteers having, say, 45 percent of the phone numbers accurate versus 70 percent of the phone numbers being accurate is enormous."