RK ARCHIVE - GOTV - Where Should the Democratic Party Invest Its Money?

How should a political party focus it's GOTV efforts? Its an age old question and is a frequently source of debate in political party circles. Do you invest your very limited resources in canvassing, telephones, direct mail, or internet? Well a new study gives us some answers.

First, consider this. The Mt. Vernon Magisterial District is a unique place and a place in a rapid state of change. As the Washington Post recently pointed out this Monday, the Ft. Hunt area, which makes up a huge chunk of the Mt. Vernon electorate, has an extremely high percentage of the elderly in its electorate - because it's such a great place to live, no one wants to leave! BUT, Mt. Vernon also has some of the largest tracts of new communities and a younger electorate in its southern precincts. Click here for the Washington Post age dispersal demographic.

And guess what? The elderly vote like crazy and the young people don't. Here are the voter turnout statistics for the Mt. Vernon Magisterial District for the 2006 Webb-Allen race.
2006 Webb-Allen Race Voter Turnout
Mt. Vernon Magisterial District of Fairfax County
(116,000 People/68,000 Registered Voters)

Where are all the turnout problems? Young people. (It's like that in every district)

Where can the Democratic Party get the most bang for its limited bucks?
Young people.

So, how much money is the Democratic Party at any level (including the Mt. Vernon Democratic Committee) investing in text messaging to generate voter turnout to the best of my knowledge? $0. What's does the Democratic Party traditionally put all of it's money in? That's right - $67 per vote direct mail.

Many of the Presidential campaigns are on board with this, but for some reason, the party committees seem to be focused on traditional methods instead of getting out and taking steps to meet this new challenge.

As I recently heard Former Governor Mark Warner say just this past winter. If you are under 35, you get your information about the world in a totally different way than those over 35. Investment in blogs, My Space, Facebook, You Tube, etc. are critical for the Democratic Party. Whoever wins the race there, wins the youth vote and once their vote is captured, it's ours for most if not all of their lifetime.

It's time the Democratic Party made real and significant investments in technology for use by the grassroots of the party. The time is now. Opportunities are being lost.

So from me, I say now - mea culpa. I've missed the boat on texting so far. However, if you want to help, join the Mt. Vernon Democratic Committee and help us effect change!

Comments

Agree (Gordie - 9/21/2007 8:55:24 AM)

and don't forget the reminder to vote on Election Day. Most young peoples lives are filled with so many other things, they forget to vote.

An important fact to everything said in the diary is "If the young people who backed Kerry had voted, We would have a good President in the White House and America would be allot different today"

Personally for me I do not like text messages, but for the younger generation and with cell phone charges, it is their cheapest way to communicate.

We have got to reach every voter and keep our promises made during campaigns, to keep them coming back.

How do we start? (Glant - 9/21/2007 9:04:29 AM)

If we wanted to send text messages how would we start? Is there a directory of cell phone numbers that could serve as a base? Or would the candidates and local Committees need to start building text message addresses to go with e-mail lists?

It seems to me that texting or even calling voters on their cell phones would be a great improvement on the classic precinct "flushing" in many of the suburban areas (I have no idea about the non-suburban areas), especially with young, two-earner households.

Numbers (chippenham - 9/21/2007 10:41:18 AM)

As far as I know, the only way you can get cell phone numbers is if people give them to you. Your average non-voting young person *may* give Barack Obama his or her cell phone number. The likelihood that they will log onto the DPVA website and do the same is pretty small. Hell, if they're logging onto a DPVA website, they are probably already a voter.

Texting...... (Flipper - 9/21/2007 4:05:24 PM)

It seems to me there has to be listings of cell phone numbers that can be purchaed somewhere. This would be a great project for the DPVA to look into. And if lists are axailable, the DPVA could add these numbers to the voter file for use by the local committees as well as candidates themselves. Inceasing voter turnout amongst the under thirty crowd from 29% to just 35% could have far reaching electoral benefits for Dems on a local and statewide basis.

Anyone have any ideas where these lists could be purchased?

Call phone lists (listlady - 9/22/2007 1:14:57 PM)

You can quickly google many vendors of cell phone number lists. The practical challenge is to match numbers with voters' names reliably so text messages can be well targeted. Commercial lists of land-line phone numbers have many problems, thanks to poor name-matching software and incomplete name and/or address listings in source directories. Experience shows that a commercial list of residential numbers in Arlington is likely to be about 30% inaccurate, and worse for apartment-dwellers. The matching problems with cell phones would start with duplicate or similar names -- and not just in one locality, since many people have cell phones with area codes from somewhere else.

How About A Test Run In Mt. Vernon (Flipper - 9/22/2007 2:16:33 PM)

Lstlady, thanks for the input as to where to find these lists

And to Scott - you guys in Mt. Vernon sound like you are on this like white on rice. It seems like Mt. Vernon would be a great test laboratory to try this out and see what type of results you get.

To the DPVA - how about locating these lists on Google and purchasing a list of cell numbers for the under 30 crowd in Scott's district of Mt. Vernon and passing them along to him and his committee to use to see what type of uptick in voter turnout they can get this fall. Scott could let us know how it went, what worked well, what didn't problems and results and based on Scott's feedback and results, perhaps implement this statewide for the upcoming presidential and senate race. And data like this will keep giving well into 2009 for the gubernatorial race as well - so consider it an investment as opposoed to an expense.

Scott, what do you think?

DPVA????????????????????

I have all kinds of questions about the methodology (Randy Klear - 9/23/2007 12:05:33 AM)

of this study, beginning with the point that one of its sponsors, Working Assets, is a cell phone service vendor and has a vested interest in the result. (Yes, I know, they're a "social action network". The point stands that they sell cell phone services and make money doing it.) It also appears that the test was a non-partisan "please remember to vote" message, which should generate a much more positive response than a message for a particular party or candidate.

The study itself included only the text messages; the cost figures for other media came from another paper by another researcher. This raises serious questions about selection bias; are these really apples-to-apples comparisons? Are the contact universes comparable?

There is also the fine print disclaimer at the bottom that "[l]ist acquisition and validation costs were minimal in this instance, but may vary for other campaigns." In other words, the text message cost figure may well be nothing but smoke.

And one more thing to consider--text messaging may seem open now because it is relatively spam-free. But, as the number, size and quality of commercial cell phone lists increase, text message users will become just as jaundiced and defensive as landline phone users did during the telemarketing pandemic of the 1980s and 1990s. Blocks will go up and response rates will go down. People will defend themselves from what they perceive as advertiser harrassment. Just think about your own current set of email filters compared to what it was 5 years ago. (For that matter, ask yourself why email wasn't included in the fact sheet.)

Certainly new contact methods are worth pursuing, but there seems to be a lot less here than meets the eye.