Does Barack Obama care about what movies you watch? Would it make a difference to John McCain if you owned a truck instead of a car?

The answers may surprise you.

Politicking nationwide has reached a fever pitch heading into the final months of campaigning before the November election. At a premium among campaigns is information - specific information, specifically about you. Thanks to increasingly sophisticated polling techniques, candidates are learning how to target their messages to an almost individual level.

"Micro-targeting is not magic, but it allows for educated analysis of voting trends that can help to track voter behavior," said Blair Latoff, a Republican National Committee spokeswoman. "It can't win an election on its own, but it certainly helps maximize the effectiveness of a campaign's messaging."

Laura Quinn, chief executive officer of Catalist, the leading national database of voter information used by Democrats, said the key to efficient campaigning is a high volume of diverse information.

"There are lifelong Republicans who are worried about what's happening with climate change," she said, citing an issue traditionally dominated by Democrats. "If you know how to approach the conversation, you might be able to make much more headway (gaining their support for a Democratic candidate)."

Catalist gathers information from three sources: public records, political and grassroots organizations and commercial data before using sophisticated calculations to glean useful patterns from it.

For instance, by using a combination of U.S. Census data and the Maine Bureau of Motor Vehicles, the Sun Journal was able make a rudimentary profile of the "average Mainer."

In case you're curious: You're about 40-years-old, you drive a 1999 Ford Taurus, you're married and you've got a cat. Maybe a kid. And you're white.

A company like Catalist would take that simple demographic data, layer it with contact information collected by local grassroots organizations as well as any commercial data they could obtain, and, for a price, tell a campaign which issues to stress with which voters.

Quinn said the key to success is having enough information to create patterns. From there, the applications for campaigns are clear.

"You do some initial polling and you sort the electorate into groups - those we can absolutely count on, those we can't and everybody else in the middle," she said. "If the group in the middle is mostly 'soccer moms,' you might design your advertising strategy around that type of audience."

Commercially the trend has been evolving for years.

"Collaborative filtering" is what Steve Swasey, spokesman for Netflix, calls it. He said it wasn't enough to just know what movies people were renting, so they created a ranking system so users could share whether they liked their selections or not, and Netflix could then recommend other, similar movies to members.

"What (we recommend) is tied to what other people who like the same movies as you have rated positively," he said. "More than 60 percent of Netflix members have rated at least 200 movies, which gives us this enormous database of movie ratings. We have these very extensive algorithms that calculate the likelihood you're going to like another movie similar to it."

But the personal minutiae gathered to aid political campaigns is staggering.

"Some (information) might be somewhat trivial, like you opened e-mails five times this year, but all of it matters," Quinn said. "Are you someone who signs a petition or are you someone who knocks on doors? Are you clicking and responding to an e-mail or are you actually writing a check and making a donation?"

Groups like Rock the Vote, which focuses on registering young voters across the country, have really taken advantage of micro-targeting.

For instance, beyond realizing text messaging is a great way to contact young people, they even know the best time of day to do so, Quinn said.

The 2004 presidential election proved the role of micro-targeting in campaigns. Karl Rove, a Republican strategist, is credited with using data collected from as far back as the Nixon campaign to bolster voter turnout for President Bush when running for re-election.

Democrats rebounded by the 2006 congressional election cycle, sweeping into the majority in both the House and the Senate, aided by their use of the enhanced polling tactics.

In Maine, it's unclear if campaigns have tried to take advantage of the trend.

Steve Abbott, campaign manager for Maine U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, a Republican running for re-election, said their campaign chose to stick with traditional polling and not spend the extra money for micro-targeting.

"It's too expensive and didn't make sense for the state because we're really homogenous," he said.

On the Democratic side, Rep. Tom Allen's campaign is staying tight-lipped about their game plan.

"We are making sure we talk to Maine voters about what they care about. ... Other than that, I won't go into our strategies," said Carol Andrews, Allen's campaign spokeswoman.

Since last fall, Allen's campaign has spent more than $150,000 on a polling firm that also happens to be a Catalist client, according to Federal Election Commission records. The Collins' campaign has spent about a third as much on polling.

The bottom line, said Sandy Maisel, a political science professor from Colby College, is not that politics is changing, rather the tools are.

"How do you get the most bang for your buck? It's evolutionary as technology has changed," Maisel said.

Quinn, from Catalist, said ultimately it's democracy as a whole that benefits.

"One thing is certain: When politics becomes more personal, people get more engaged and more likely to participate, and that's a good thing," she said.