There's a reason election watchers emphasize ground game. Getting Out The Vote is a crucial aspect of campaigning, and a superior operation means actual point gains over an opponent.

In an election as tight as this, outperforming polls by a single point means entire states can be won. That's why the ground game is so crucial.

As a result of an investment in digital GOTV, Mitt Romney could know if he's won the election before anyone else in the country, even the states themselves.

Romney's ground game hinges on Project ORCA, an experimental, state-of-the-art mobile app that the Romney campaign will use to turn out the vote on Election Day.

Republicans who know about it are thrilled with ORCA, a Republican brainchild that Romney Press Secretary Andrea Saul described as "the Republican Party’s newest, most technologically advanced plan to win the 2012 presidential election."

According to Saul, Romney poll watchers will each be equipped with a smartphone or tablet loaded with the ORCA app. Each campaign deploys poll watchers to oversee Election Day activities at polling sites and make sure everything is on the level.

The campaign has a list of registered voters in each district loaded into the app taken from local voter rolls. When someone checks in to a polling location, the poll watcher clicks their name in the app. This data is relayed to a "national dashboard" at the Boston headquarters, according to Saul.

"From there, data will be interpreted and utilized to plan voter turnout tactics on Election Day," she said. "Project ORCA also allows us to filter out people who have already voted, remove those people from our phone banks, and adjust our efforts nationally through this method."

Practically speaking, this means deploying calls and volunteers to known Romney supporters who haven't voted, without wasting resources on those who have done so. Once the Romney campaign has locked up a state, Saul explained, resources can be moved to other states.

The Election Day operation involves 34,000 volunteers at polling sites — each trained extensively — plus 800 volunteers in Boston serving as the help desk. Thousands more will be knocking on doors in response to orders from Boston based on the ORCA data.

ORCA is, in Saul's words, "the world's largest exit poll." According to the campaign, Romney will know before anyone else if he's won the election, even the state Boards of Elections.

"Through Project ORCA," Saul said, "we can know the ballot on Election Day and why we’re up or down in a certain state by age, gender, propensity, etc., and still have seven hours to affect voter turnout and impact the outcome."

ORCA was envisioned in the primary, when the campaign had difficulties working from Boston and impacting voter turnout. Saul said "It was disappointing to receive data later and realize if we had access to that data earlier, we could have done something differently and affected the outcome."

The timeline makes sense. A Slate piece from this summer talked about how Romney had a digital hiring spree towards the end of the primaries:

Romney’s digital department has gone on a summertime personnel spree, hiring former employees of Apple, Google Analytics, Ominture [...] A cluster of newly hired engineers have been permanently situated in Utah, partially to exploit the time difference when working on overnight projects.

If ORCA delivers as the Romney people involve say it will, President Romney's summer hiring decisions will make a whole lot more sense in retrospect. If Romney pulls out a win, it will be because of turnout. The race is so close that outperforming polls by 2 points in some states could cause a Romney victory.