SMS Reminders Boost Youth Voter Turnout at Elections

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 the USA's 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 -- 18-31 year olds 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.

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.
• At just $1.56 per additional vote generated, text messaging is extremely cost effective.

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.

The full report is available at: http://www.newvotersproject.org/research/text-messaging.

Article published on 13th September 2007