“Every single voter in this country we’ve appended data to,” he said. “It’s all on cellphones. We have two or three apps we’ve created, … so now when we’re going door-to-door in Ohio or Pennsylvania or even Oklahoma, we’re pulling up on a cellphone who lives there and what are the one or two issues that are going to motivate them to go vote.”

Pinnell and other Republicans credit President Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign with using those techniques to bring new voters to the polls in the last presidential election. Now, they say, data and technology are finding new potential Republican voters.

Whether tapping all of these previously marginal voters is contributing to what seems to be wider than usual variations in polling results, Pinnell couldn’t say.

What he did say, and not for the first time, is that Republicans must come to grips with demographic reality.

“In 1988, George H.W. Bush got 59 percent of the white vote and won 426 electoral votes,” Pinnell said. “In 2012, Mitt Romney got 59 percent of the white vote and won 206 electoral votes. He lost the nonwhite vote by 63 points.