Young Voters Who Received Text Messages Reminding Them to Vote on Election Eve Turned Out in Greater Numbers

A new study from researchers at Princeton and the University of Michigan shows that young voters who were sent text message reminders to vote, on the eve of Election Day 2006, were significantly more likely to vote than those who didn’t receive a text message reminder. The study, which relied on voter registration data from the Student PIRGs’ New Voters Project and Working Assets Wireless, found that sending a text message reminder to vote provided a 4 percent boost in youth voter turnout rates.  

"The millennial generation is ready to vote, if we ask them," said Michael Kieschnick, President of Working Assets. "We just need to reach them in a relevant way - and that's the mobile phone."

“The youth vote matters – young people will represent more than one-third of the electorate by 2015, and what this study shows is that we have another powerful tool in our toolkit to turn them out to the polls,” said Ellynne Bannon, Director of the Student PIRGs’ New Voters Project. Background information on young voters.

Other key findings from the new report include:

• Of the different text message reminders tested, a to-the-point reminder to vote was most effective, with a 5 percent boost.
• In a follow up survey, 59 percent of the text message recipients reported that the reminder was helpful, while 1 percent reported being less likely to vote because of receiving a text message.
• Hispanics had especially positive feelings about the reminders.
• The cost per additional vote generated was $1.56.
  

On the eve of the election in November 2006, researchers sent text message voting reminders to more than 4,000 young voters with mobile phone numbers chosen at random from a pool of more than 8,000 young people who had recently registered to vote. Following the elections, all 8,000 plus records were matched against voter files to determine which of the registrants had voted.

The Student PIRGs’ New Voters Project provided information of 7,254 newly registered young voters with valid cell phone numbers for this study. Working Assets provided information of 5,313 new registrants with valid cell phone numbers.

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Launched in 2003, the Student PIRGs’ New Voters Project is the largest national non-profit, nonpartisan youth voter mobilization effort. Since 2003, the project registered more than 600,000 young voters and made more than 650,000 personalized Get Out the Vote contacts leading up to Election Day to turn out young voters. www.newvotersproject.org

Working Assets is a wireless telephone company that helps people make a difference in the world by doing the things they do every day. The company works to connect cutting-edge communications technology – including mobile phone applications – with current political issues and non-partisan civic participation programs. To date Working Assets has raised over $50 million for groups working to build a more humane, just, sustainable world, and since 2003 has helped register more than 1.2 million new voters, including 700,000 voters online. www.workingassets.com

Allison Dale is a doctoral student in the Department of Political Science at the University of Michigan. She received a master’s degree in political science from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. She worked as a political researcher in Washington, D.C. before doing campaign research on several local and national political campaigns. 

Aaron Strauss is a Ph.D. Candidate at Princeton University in the Department of Politics. He received a master’s degree in politics from Princeton University and a master’s degree in computer science from MIT. He has worked in political consulting in Washington, D.C. as well as on several political campaigns. His publications include works in the American Journal of Political Science and Political Analysis (forthcoming).

The researchers would like to thank the University of Massachusetts-Amherst Donahue Institute Civic Initiative, Catalist, The Mellman Group, Survey Sampling International, and Kieloch Consulting for their generous support of this study.

MORE INFORMATION
Becky Bond, Political Director, Working Assets, 415.595.0040, bbond@workingassets.com

Sujatha Jahagirdar, Program Director, Student PIRGs’ New Voters Project, 323.309.6120, sujatha@studentpirgs.org