The digital divide of the 2012 presidential campaign — exemplified by Mitt Romney’s infamous ORCA data-base failure — has prompted Republicans to become much more tech savvy. But Democrats haven’t stood still and apparently have a new edge in another area: testing the effectiveness of campaign messages with different audiences.

A new article in Campaigns and Elections magazine says one of the big reasons Terry McAuliffe narrowly won the Virginia governorship in November was that he was on the cutting edge of “a progressive revolution in modeling, targeting, persuasion and turnout” of voters. By contrast, the article’s authors conclude that “it is exceedingly rare to find anyone on the right who is aware” of the use of controlled experiments to fashion political messaging. Because McAuliffe beat Republican Ken Cuccinelli by only just over 2 percent of the vote, the article speculates that the GOP could have won if it had done better research on which messages and which media-delivery platforms would have worked best in discrediting McAuliffe.

The article was written by Adam Schaeffer, a co-founder of the research firm Evolving Strategies, and Nancy Smith, the Grassroots Coordinator for Middle Resolution PAC. Their controlled experiments on which messages could have helped Cuccinelli close the gap are worth examining.

Surprisingly, Schaeffer and Smith conclude that pouring more resources into Cuccinelli’s last-minute attack on Obamacare’s emerging woes wouldn’t have been more effective.

Greater efforts to discredit McAuliffe’s business career, which included a failing, government-subsidized “green car” company would have done better in turning voters away from the Democrat, but were unlikely to be a game-changer.

The one message that could have dramatically shifted voters would have been one attacking McAuliffe’s support for unrestricted, late-term, and taxpayer-funded abortions. Schaeffer and Smith conclude that a single phone message on that topic “shifted support a net 13 to 15 points away from McAuliffe and toward Cuccinelli. The cost per vote here was a remarkably cheap $0.50 per additional vote, and even less expensive still when targeting the most persuadable segment of the electorate.”

A topic declared radioactive by nearly everyone, locked away in secure storage behind a blazing Hazmat warning by the Cuccinelli campaign, appears to have been a powerful weapon for the Republican ticket that could have substantially closed the gap, and possibly even won Cuccinelli the election.”

Schaeffer and Smith note that it is Democrats who increasingly rely on rigorous research on the composition of the electorate and what messages work to move it. The Republican apparatus, on the other hand, “still largely relies on gut instinct and guru-ism, where the argument goes to the most forceful personality and best storyteller.” It would be ironic indeed, if it was the Cuccinelli campaign’s decision to follow the conventional wisdom of establishment Republicans that it had to stay away from the abortion issue that might have cost it the election last month.