On the day before the US congressional elections in November 2006, researchers from Princeton and the University of Michigan sent text messages to a random sample of more than 8000 young people around the country to remind them to go out and vote. The result, which was released in September 2007, showed that receiving a text message increased a person’s likelihood of voting by more than four percentage points.

Allison Dale, one of two researchers who conducted the survey and a graduate student at the University of Michigan, says the result was very surprising, especially since other surveys on campaign mobilization have shown that the best way to persuade people to vote is through personal contact. In other words, someone knocks on your front door or gives you a call to remind you to vote rather than using impersonal means such as post or e-mail.

“One of the reasons why we think SMS is effective in this way is because it is still novel,” Dale says. “Text messaging in the US isn’t very cluttered by spam or anything like that, so you really notice the message. As it gets more cluttered and more people start using it to promote their campaigns, it may become less effective.”

To further explore the benefit of text messaging in elections, Dale and her partner at Princeton University hope to carry out a follow-up study during the next presidential election that will explore personal networking. “A study of the 2004 Spanish election showed that viral text messaging had a huge effect on the outcome, and we want to look into that,” she says. “We would like to conduct an experiment in which young people receive a text message from someone they know, making it even more personal.”

Regardless of what the future holds for SMS and its power to persuade young people to go out and vote, the result from the survey has generated interest in the political community in the US.

“People understand that the methods used to contact voters in the past are becoming increasingly difficult and outdated,” Dale says. “And this study shows that it is impractical not to keep up with the advances that the public are taking advantage of.”

Dale says that one advantage of using SMS is that it makes it possible to reach members of the young urban population who rely on their mobile phones – a new group of voters that is very difficult to contact otherwise. The other advantage is that it is cheap and instantaneous. “It is a very quick and easy way to get a message out to a lot of people without a lot of investment being required,” she says.

At just USD 1.56 per additional vote generated, text messaging is extremely cost-effective compared with other methods, the survey concluded.

 

But using SMS to reach out to voters is easier said than done. Several presidential campaigns have started to use text messaging for information purposes but are not yet able to use it to persuade voters to support them because of restrictions on soliciting people’s mobile phone numbers.

“It’s more something candidates use to stay in touch with their supporters because one of the challenges with text messaging is that you have to encourage people to voluntarily give out their phone number, and that makes it difficult for any candidate to use it in a widespread way,” Dale says.

Dale believes that text messaging has a lot of potential but says that a lot hinges on what happens when it comes to mobile phone regulations.

“It is a useful communication tool, but until more people are willing to give out their numbers, it is going to be confined to a small group of people,” she says.

Most American president candidates, such as Hillary Clinton and John Edwards, have realized the potential of sms and encourage people on their websites to sign up for mobile updates from their campaign.

Although there is a long way to go, Dale also believes a lot can be said for using SMS to vote. “American Idol arguably gets more votes from young people than the national election,” she says.

“Maybe it is because they are voting on their mobile phones and it is easy to do, which makes it appealing. There is definitely something to be said for making voting easier for people.”

Torunn Hansen-Tangen