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Text Messaging Can Help With Voter Turnout

Tue, September 18th, 2007 by Michael Cornfield | 2 comments

Mobile phones are more common than internet connections, but for a host of reasons they haven’t played much of a role in campaign politics.  That may change, especially if campaigns can restrain themselves.

The bright prospects are outlined in a top-notch study just released by two Ph.D. candidates at The University of Michigan and Princeton University.  Alison Dale and Aaron Strauss compiled a study population of 8500 voters, mostly young people about to vote for the first time in the 2006 midterm elections.  They sent text messages the day before the general election to some of them, and found that the recipients were 4.2% more likely to vote than their peers who did not receive such prompts.  That may not seem like such a big increase.  But considering that the messages contained no political appeals whatsoever –and, further, that the cost per extra vote was about $1.50, as compared with the $20-70 per vote which campaigns pay to turn out voters via direct mail, phone banks, and canvassing—this looks like a hand-in-glove discovery of how to put a new technology to political good use.

As the study authors note, young people move frequently, but they take their mobiles with them.  A post-election survey found that a solid majority (59%) considered the text message reminder to vote “helpful” instead of “bother[some].”  Hispanic voters, like young voters, were especially motivated by the new media method.

Since both young and Hispanic voters are prime targets for campaigns this coming cycle, the lesson seems clear: go mobile.  But there’s an important caveat: don’t go overboard.  Keep pinging those phones (at the owners’ expense), and that solid majority regarding the message as a friendly reminder is likely to shrink.

In order to send that silver bullet text message, campaigns need to take the crucial and intricate first step of compiling a list of opt-in mobile phone numbers.  The best way to do that is to ask for mobile numbers in the course of developing an activist database through appeals across the gamut of media and events.

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