Text Messaging Prods Youth Voters to Action

What's better than direct mail, leaflets and phone calls when it comes to getting young people to vote? Their medium of choice, of course: the text message.

Members of Generation Y aren’t lazy… they just need a little reminding sometimes. That was what researchers at Princeton and the University of Michigan concluded when they studied the impact of text messaging on youth voter turnout, and found that a simple reminder received on a cell phone could boost voter turnout among young people by 4 percent.

Although 4 percent might not be what we traditionally consider “significant,” in close races between candidates where one is favored by young voters, 4 percent could make all the difference in sealing a victory. Texting also stands head and shoulders above other methods of reminding people to vote. Direct mail produces only a 0.6% boost in voter turnout, effectively costing promoters $67 for every additional vote.  By comparison, texting costs only $1.56 per vote.

The study found that young people were especially receptive to the text-messaged reminders, as opposed to other methods that could be considered more intrusive. Only 23 percent of recipients were bothered by the messages, while 59 percent actually found them helpful.

“The millennial generation is ready to vote, if we ask them," said Michael Kieschnick, president of Working Assets, the wireless company that assisted in the research. "We just need to reach them in a relevant way – and that’s the mobile phone.”