Slate’s Farhad Manjoo says Obama’s SMS text messages are this campaign’s secret weapon. He looks at work done by Donald Green and Alan Gerber, two political scientists at Yale whose book, Get Out the Vote: How To Increase Voter Turnout, is considered the bible of voter mobilization efforts:
Green and Gerber estimate that a door-canvassing operation costs $16 per hour, with six voters contacted each hour; if you convince one of every 14 voters you canvass, you’re paying $29 for each new voter. A volunteer phone bank operation will run you even more—$38 per acquired voter. This is the wondrous thing about text-messaging: Studies show that text-based get-out-the-vote appeals win one voter for every 25 people contacted. That’s nearly as effective as door-canvassing, but it’s much, much cheaper. Text messages cost about 6 cents per contact—only $1.50 per new voter.
Obama has a text-messaging operation; McCain doesn’t. Manjoo says the beauty of text messaging is that it is both automated and personalized:
The texts reminded me to watch the convention and the debates and to donate money to the Red Cross when Hurricane Gustav hit. In September, Obama asked me to text him my ZIP code. I did, and now I get location-specific messages—alerts to phone banks and debate-watching parties in my area, reminders of registration deadlines in my state, and appeals for me to volunteer in neighboring states. The messages are rendered in a friendly, professional tone (they refer to the candidate as Barack) and have been free of both fundraising appeals and any kind of negative campaigning.
Get out the vote:
In 2006, political science grad students Aaron Strauss and Allison Dale studied how newly registered voters responded to text-message reminders sent out just before the election. The text messages increased turnout by 3.1 percentage points. Strauss says there’s a simple reason why: “The most prevalent excuse for registered voters who don’t cast a ballot is, ‘I’m too busy’ or ‘I forgot.’ Texting someone is a convenient, targeted, and noticeable reminder for them to schedule their Election Day activities with a block of time set aside for going to the polling place.” In a post-election survey, Strauss and Dale asked voters whether they found the text messages helpful; 59 percent said yes.
Text messaging is only one of the tech tools used by the campaign. Obama’s Twitter account now has 107,857 followers, among the largest on Twitter. (He’s following 111,922.) The account links to videos, short campaign announcements, and brief messages (“watch the last debate tonight…”).
The Obama iPhone application can be downloaded from the iTunes store to your iPhone. A recruiting campaign tool, it searches your contact list for phone numbers of people in battleground states. When it finds relevant numbers, it alerts you and prods you to call that person. It also pulls in news and video updates.