Political campaigns have always been about organising.

Political campaigns have always been about organising. Photo: Jim Rice

THE big difference first. Australians are compelled by law to vote - in America, people get to choose. ''Every two years in the US you've got to turn out the vote,'' says Peter Lewis of Essential Media, a polling firm in Australia that puts itself on the progressive side of politics. ''That creates a huge impetus for organising.''

But while convincing people to give up their time, queue and fill out a ballot takes up enormous energy, any campaign has universal lessons. Australia's political professionals are poring over President Barack Obama's success - and where Mitt Romney went wrong, but got it right, too - for tricks and strategies to apply at home.

''There is always a mythology that develops after a victory, my job is to sort fact from fiction,'' says Liberal Party federal director Brian Loughnane.

Both parties in Australia have strong ties with their American counterparts, and over the coming months will draw on post-mortem studies by Democrats and Republicans.

But the early impressions are of a new political science - the power of databases, collated poll numbers, voter profiles, demographic characteristics, all to specially tailor a messages to segmented audiences.

''The big lesson is lots of small contributions can make a big difference,'' is how George Wright, Labor's national secretary, puts it. ''What we have tended to do is bang, top-down.''

Social media plays a role here. Obama's team would sow a few seeds ahead of a policy announcement or a major event on the campaign trail to stir a buzz, encourage supporters to spread the word, make a small donation, door-knock in the neighbourhood. Think of it as lounge room politics, but an effort to translate the easy click of a button online into real-world activity and avoid becoming an empty phenomenon - the Kony campaign against the Ugandan warlord, for instance.

Back to the future, it might seem. After all, political campaigns have always been about organising - the union movement for workers, small and big business to promote capital interests. Yet new ways of doing old jobs can spark a revolution. And every campaign can produce a miracle.