Dear MoveOn member,
A recent Gallup poll found that just 26% of 18- to 29-year-olds are certain to vote in this year's midterm election—less than half of any other age group.1
If we can't change those numbers, you can kiss the blue wave goodbye. Thankfully, we have a plan.
Since 2017, MoveOn has been developing a text messaging tool called Spoke, which helps volunteers send texts directly to potential voters. It's a great way to help get young people to vote. They are the cord-cutting generation. They don't watch TV—they stream. And they don't talk on the phone—they text.
Over the next 11 days, volunteers for MoveOn will send more than 20 million texts to potential voters whom we could not have reached using more traditional methods like phone calls or email.
But to pull off this amazing program, we need to scale up our tech—and fast. Just last week, the amazing flood of volunteers using our tool to send text messages crashed the system, and we had to purchase more server space and add dedicated tech support just to keep it up and running.
This is what our staff likes to call "a Cadillac problem," meaning that so many people are eager to help get out the vote that our systems are stretched to the limit to meet the demand. Which is why we need your help, Eddie.
Why text messaging? Because it works—especially to reach young voters, who tend to vote for Democrats, but are among the hardest voter segments to turn out.
In 2016, large scale tests by some of the best election experts in the business found that you can increase turnout by .65% with get-out-the-vote text messages—which might not sound like much, but it could mean 500,000 to 800,000 votes nationwide, easily enough to swing control of Congress or a presidential election.2
Already, 500,000 people have pledged to vote via our text messaging program, and we still have more than 20 million more to contact!
It's easy to understand why text messaging has become so effective. Over the last decade, texting has become the dominant form of communication for millennials. People age 18-30 are spending less and less time talking on the phone and more and more time using social media and text messages to communicate.3
When young people do talk on the phone, it's usually to talk to a friend. Answering a cold call from a phone number you don't recognize? That's going the way of the fax machine or handwritten letter. The explosion of robocalling over the last year has supercharged the trend—these days, if you don't screen your calls, you'll go crazy.
Texting has also been proven to be more effective for getting out the vote than email, which lacks the immediacy of text messaging.4 Research shows that 90% of text messages are read within five minutes of being sent, while email can sit in the inbox unread for days or weeks, and phone calls don't get answered at all.5
Will you chip in $5 to make sure we can text more than 20 million potential voters over the next 11 days?
Yes, I'll chip in to help take back Congress and defeat Donald Trump.
Thanks for all you do.
–Mark, Shari, Erik, Shaka, and the rest of the MoveOn Text Team
Sources:
1. "Young Voters Might Actually Show Up At The Polls This Year," FiveThirtyEight, October 16, 2018
https://act.moveon.org/go/54901?t=4&akid=219257%2E10220574%2E9-9htC
2. "Why texting beats email for GOTV," Campaigns & Elections, October 27, 2017
https://act.moveon.org/go/54902?t=6&akid=219257%2E10220574%2E9-9htC
3. "Why Millennials Are Texting More And Talking Less," Forbes, July 15, 2015
https://act.moveon.org/go/54903?t=8&akid=219257%2E10220574%2E9-9htC
4. "Why texting beats email for GOTV," Campaigns & Elections, October 27, 2017
https://act.moveon.org/go/54902?t=10&akid=219257%2E10220574%2E9-9htC
5. "Campaigns Enter Texting Era With a Plea: Will U Vote 4 Me?" The New York Times, August 1, 2018
https://act.moveon.org/go/54895?t=12&akid=219257%2E10220574%2E9-9htC
PAID FOR BY MOVEON
This email was sent to Eddie Alfaro on October 26th, 2018. To change your email address or update your contact info, click here. To remove yourself from this list, click here.
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