Using Technology To Get Out Youth Vote
There’s an interesting article from Bloomberg about how Barack Obama’s campaign is using text messages to get out the vote, especially among the young and African Americans.
The young are notorious for not voting. The last presidential election only 45% of eligible voters below the age of 30 voted. Even though they make up 25% of the electorate, they were only 16% of the electorate that voted.
One thing that young people are good at is using technology, hence the text messaging drive. Obama’s campaign has been collecting people’s cell phone numbers for over a year, using enticements as promising those that give their cell phone numbers would be the first to be notified of the Vice Presidential nominee.
Using text messaging to get out the vote has been shown to be effective in the 2006 midterm elections. It caused a 4% increase in voter turnout, as opposed to the 1.3% increase from using traditional flyers.
Text messaging is also relatively cheap, costing $1.56 per vote compared to $32 for leafleting.
Did you enjoy this post? Why not leave a comment below and continue the conversation, or subscribe to my feed and get articles like this delivered automatically to your feed reader.
Comments
No comments yet.
Leave a comment