I guess that’s why Obama got 10M less votes than in 2008.
I think it was 9M as of the day after the election but they actually continue counting millions of ballots for a couple of weeks afterwards. Both Obama and Romney will pick up a few million more.
However many less they got, without that operation it would have been worse and he would have lost.
But they knew a dirty election game would make many conservatives staying at home and they made it.