Aps, Ads, and Texting, Oh My! How Mobile is Going to Change Campaigning in 2012

If Facebook and the internet were the big game changers in the 2008 election, then what will fill those shoes in 2012? Well, word on the streets of DC is that the cell phone is going to do just that. Recently Scott Conroy, White House correspondent for Real Clear Politics spoke in a lecture I attended and voiced his opinion that cellular was going to be the next big thing to hit elections. Katie Harbath reiterated this point in her article The Rise of Mobile, and Michael Stein and Katrin Verclas agreed in their article Using Mobile Phones in Advocacy Campaigns.

So how is the cell phone, a piece of technology that has been popular for about 15 years, going to all of a sudden make a big splash in the campaign world?

Well there are a few ways. The big reason though, is the power of the Smartphone. According to a Pew study, 26 percent of Americans used their mobile devices to “learn about or participate in the 2012 midterm election campaign.” This number is surely to rise in the 2012 election cycle as nearly 50% of the nation uses a Smartphone, and campaigns learns to use these phones as a means of communicating with the public in a more sophisticated manner.

As Harbath notes in her article, Smartphone devises are useful in that now, like never before, campaigns can create mobile ads for fundraising, for online surveys, as a means of gaining email address to send further information. Additionally, the phones can help the public find polling locations and can learn more about the candidates with a swipe of a finger on websites which are optimized for the mobile phones.

Stein and Verclas explain how to maximize the effectiveness of text messaging in a campaign. Texting can be used to alert supporters, supporters can text legislators, texts can be used to arrange meetings, (I know, I sound like Bubba from Forest Gump talking about shrimp, “You can barbecue it, boil it, broil it, bake it…”), but really, text messages can be used in an innumerable amount of ways to communicate with, and get information from the public in a very direct and personal manner.

Additionally, websites such as campaignapps.com give clear instructions on how to create and manage apps to support campaign efforts. These apps can help not only with getting information to voters, but also to help organize the campaign workers themselves.  

These articles made convincing cases for how mobile will effect the next election cycle, and it will certainly be interesting to observe what works and what doesn’t in using mobile phones to mobilize voters.