Connecting with voters in the 2012 election campaigns

Joanna S. Kao

jskao@mit.edu

CMS.360 Wednesday, December 12, 2012

How'd we get to this topic?

Civic spam — overusing communication tools to reach an audience

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Constituent relationship management

Touch frequency research

How'd we get to this topic?

Whoa... just like campaign emails/calls/posts

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Focus: Ways campaigns connected with voters

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Mostly focusing on presidential elections

What made 2012 different?

Better targeting

More technology

Less people using TVs

More people only online

3 communication techniques

Email

• Email personalization

• ProPublica's Message Machine

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Phone

• Traditional phone banks

• Obama call tool

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Social Media

• integration with FB OG / FB apps

Email — Targeting, in their words

Obama campaign (Toby Fallsgraff):

• raised $500 million via 4.5 million donors

• subject lines were tested the most

• "Hey" was the "go to subject line"

• "Light swearing" like "Hell yea"

• Overall: "casual" approach

Email — ProPublica's Message Machine

Email — ProPublica's Message Machine

30,000 emails

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nearly distinct 3000 emails

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600 recipients

Email — ProPublica's Message Machine

Email — ProPublica's Message Machine, Obama's results

1. The most common difference in single blast emails was the suggested amount to donate, which was based on the recipient's donation history

2. Voters in non-swing states were encouraged to travel to swing states to participate in get-out-the-vote operations.

3. Recipients between 18-29 tended to get more emails about contests.

Phone — Method: Phone Banks

Staple of campaigns since 1968

Get info about the voter so you can follow-up

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Phone — Method: Obama Call Tools

Phone — Method: Obama Call Tools

Phone — Method: Obama Call Tools

Phone — Incentives

Volunteer for Mitt incentives

• 100 total calls made gets you a bumper sticker
• 250 total calls made gets you a lapel pin
• 500 total calls made gets you a signed photo
• 1,000 total calls made gets you a Romney T-shirt
• 1,500 total calls made gets you a Romney half-zip sweatshirt

Social Media

First "social media" presidential election

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Facebook quadruples the power of campaign messages

"About 340,000 extra people turned out to vote in the 2010 US congressional elections because of a single election-day Facebook message, estimate researchers who ran an experiment involving 61 million users of the social network." Bond, R. M. et al. Nature 489, 295–298 (2012)

Social Media

Social Media

Recap — 2012 is cool because...

better message targeting with old tools

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"big data" analysis possible because of technology

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new tools taking a big role — social media

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And finally...

Beards... just because

Questions?