WASHINGTON _ If you're trying to avoid 2020 politics, you can screen your phone calls, delete your emails without reading them and avoid answering the door when a canvasser knocks. But campaigns have figured out one form of communication you are unlikely to ignore: texting.
Democrats and Republicans alike are spending millions and deploying thousands of staffers and volunteers focused on texting with committed and potential supporters in the 2020 election. Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign, an early adopter of the tactic, has already sent nearly nine times as many text messages to voters as it did during the entire 2016 primary.
"Everyone reads their text messages," said Daniel Souweine, who ran Sanders' text message program in the 2016 race and went on to create a text messaging app for campaigns. "It's quickly moved from, 'hey, what is this thing?' to the point where you can't run a modern political campaign without it."
Tracking open rates on text messages for campaign and marketing purposes is difficult, but self-reports in surveys put the figure at between 80% to 90%. The research firm Gartner cites studies that put the rate as high as 98%. By contrast, email open rate estimates range from 10% to 20%.
It's about as easy for a campaign to text you as your friends and family. Since many Americans' cell phone numbers are now recorded in voter files, campaigns can send texts even if you've never signed up to hear from them.
Combined with new software that enables campaign staff and volunteers to send out text messages at a rapid clip _ and respond on a personalized basis _ the practice of co-called "peer-to-peer" texting is becoming more and more popular.
Sanders' two presidential campaigns offer a case study. The Vermont senator was one of the first major politicians to adopt peer-to-peer texting as a core part of his campaign's outreach strategy four years ago, and his team sent roughly 10 million texts before conceding the nomination to Hillary Clinton that summer.
Thus far in the 2020 cycle, the Sanders campaign says it has sent over 88 million texts, powered by a team of between 6,000 and 7,000 volunteers. It also has a paid team of six who work on the texting program, led by a national texting director.
Sanders and, to a lesser extent, Clinton were two of just a handful of federal candidates to incorporate text messages into their digital strategies in 2016. In 2020, every major presidential candidate, all of the national party committees and dozens of congressional and Senate candidates have spent tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars on peer-to-peer texting technology, campaign finance reports show.
Through the third quarter of 2019, campaigns, parties and political groups reported spending nearly $7 million on texting programs, led by the Republican National Committee. Kamala Harris reported spending nearly $800,000 on text message platforms and services before dropping out of the race, while Beto O'Rourke spent roughly $500,000 before ending his campaign. Warren reported $419,000 in spending, compared to $163,000 for Biden.
And that likely only captures a fraction of the activity. Some groups and campaigns, like Sanders', now operate their own peer-to-peer software systems, built and operated by campaign staff, so their spending on text messaging is not broken out in public financial records.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, for example, has already spent seven figures on texting programs in 2019, not all of which shows up in its spending reports. And an aide says it is planning to expand that investment in 2020 for the purpose of fundraising and voter turnout.
Most of the presidential campaigns, party committees and outside groups that McClatchy spoke with said they are primarily using texting as a way to mobilize people they have already identified as supporters _ those who have donated, attended an event, signed up to receive emails or volunteered.
Tim Murtaugh, a spokesman for President Donald Trump's campaign, said in a statement that "texting is an effective way for us to communicate directly with supporters without going through the bias of social media." Murtaugh highlighted how the campaign encourages people to text the campaign to secure their tickets to campaign rallies, which enables campaign operatives to gather cell phone numbers for future messaging.
Michael Joyce, a spokesman for the Republican National Committee said the party sends texts messages to people they've connected with at Trump rallies or online to try to "get them plugged into our operation."
The texts are "very micro-targeted," said Joyce, enabled by software programs that can generate a cell phone list based off specific demographic characteristics or interests.
Souweine, who co-founded the texting platform GetThru after leaving the Sanders campaign, says that "cold texting" _ sending texts to people who have yet to connect with the campaign _ is also on the rise. It's "probably the biggest shift at the macro level ... over the last couple years and into now," he said.
Before 2016, no one in politics was using texting to connect with voters in this way. Campaigns in 2012 and 2014 sent out mass messages to supporters' cell phones, like the one announcing then Barack Obama's vice presidential pick in 2008.
But the kind of targeted messaging that campaigns and outside groups are doing now is a different animal, enabling people working with the campaign to engage in an actual back-and-forth with the recipient. The response, political operatives say, has been eye-opening.
For Souweine, the "Eureka moment," as he put it, came when Sanders' digital director asked if they could "send a text message to everyone in the states surrounding Iowa and get them to come knock on doors," ahead of the 2016 Iowa caucuses.
The Sanders campaign trained a group of people how to use the software app Hustle, then the only peer-to-peer texting app available, to send out the texts and have conversations with supporters who replied.
"We got an unbelievable response," Souweine recalled. "I think we got a 5% 'yes' rate on that ask and this is a really high-bar ask."
He said the campaign would have been thrilled just getting 5% of people to even read that message, let alone say 'yes' to it.
Even more powerful than the read rate, political operatives say, is the ability to engage with people on the other end of the phone. In that sense, peer-to-peer texting replicates what field organizers do when they call volunteer prospects or knock on doors, but with a whole new level of efficiency.
But that's not to say campaigns will stop phone banking, canvassing or clogging your inbox with fundraising emails.
"We still do a lot of calling and calling is a massive success, but this is another tool," Sanders' campaign spokesman Joe Calvello said. It can be "a much easier way to talk to people, especially younger voters."
