Election years are full of uncertainty, but 2024 is an exception, as the major parties’ candidates change.
As Election Day approaches, more questions arise: Which polls should I trust? What exactly are the poll numbers showing? And why am I getting so many messages from campaigns begging me for money? This week’s “Explain It to Me” We answer these questions and more in this episode. We’re your go-to hotline for all your Vox questions.
The panicked emails Anne and her friends have been receiving have been trending in her group chat lately, looking even more desperate than the last time. Ann lives in Chicago and considers herself moderately politically active. Although she speaks more often to local councilors about housing than she does to political parties at the national level, she still gets inundated with text messages.
“I’m really hoping someone will dig deeper into these non-arranged text messages that we keep receiving,” she says. “Are these actually effective?”
As it turns out, they are. Lloyd Kotler, founder of Banter Messaging, a company that runs text campaigns for progressive organizations, says they’re making a lot of money. “One of the reasons is that text messages are so cheap. Each text costs a few pennies,” he says. “A well-designed text marketing program can be very effective at raising money.”
Banter is not meant to be a fundraiser. If you receive a text message from them, it’s more likely to be a call to action rather than a request for money. However, there are many other companies that are fundraising. These consultants are often employed by campaigns and political action committees.
But not all PACs are created equal, according to Kotler. While some people raise money for candidates or causes, others donate a small portion of the money they raise to politicians, with the rest going to expenses and inflating the salaries of the people running the PAC. There is.
How do they get around this? And how do you get voter contact information in the first place? We answer all that and more on this week’s episode of “Explain It to Me.”
Below are excerpts from the conversation, edited for length and clarity.
Listen to “Explain It to Me” on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you would like to submit a question, please email askvox@vox.com or call 1-800-618-8545.
How are these text messages created?
This campaign is launched in cooperation with the agency. They will take on existing supporters or buy data from people. And then they start sending little text messages.
How exactly do they get their data in the first place?
There are many ways to do this, from the mundane to the nefarious. The most basic method is to purchase data. They just get their information from another campaign, another PAC, or another agency that sells campaign donor data. It’s just normal business flow.
So they got your email because you signed up for something, or they knew your email six years ago when a candidate ran, but you don’t want them to know anything more. information was never given. It then adds data to obtain additional information about you and begins sending you text messages from the phone number it retrieves, which may or may not be accurate. Therefore, many people receive messages addressed to other people. It can also be retrieved from the voter file.
And the most egregious method is scraping (Federal Election Commission) data. This is highly illegal, but only if you get caught.
Can they sell your information? That feels legally awkward.
It should be illegal. The actual whole part is that the agency works on behalf of multiple clients and facilitates the sale of data between each of them. This means you will receive 8 identical messages from 8 different candidates from the same agency. Because they’re just copying and pasting the content and sending it to you over and over again.
How do you know if the organization contacting you is legitimate?
The investigation will take a full day. Let’s be honest: the average person simply doesn’t have the ability to do that. First, you need to understand who this is actually from. Next, you have to look at the PAC and who it supports. You can then go to the FEC and look up the PAC or who it is from there. Even so, it may still not be possible to paint a complete picture.
Showing that campaigns and PACs spend 80% of their expenses on overhead doesn’t tell the whole story. Because they may just be passing that money directly to the candidate. And it will be legitimate. But that couldn’t be determined from the FEC report. There is a lot of work for people to do. That’s why I always tell people, if you want to support a campaign, go directly to the campaign’s website and donate. Once you write a check, you won’t receive spam text messages for a while.
What can people do to stop these text messages?
The first thing you can do is make sure you are registered with the National Do Not Call Registry. It does nothing, but it does entitle you to file a Telephone Consumer Protection Act claim.
Then I tell everyone the best thing you can do is start a lawsuit. If you’re on a Do Not Call Registry, sending TCPA reminders to people who repeatedly text you is a very easy way to get them to stop. Because these TCPA fines are really expensive. They settle because it’s expensive.
Usually you get paid, but then your number starts getting blacklisted and you stop receiving these messages. Anyone can do it. And the more people do that, the more damage there will be on the fundraising side, and we’ll have to reconsider whether this is a viable channel.
You can also copy and paste the entire message and send it to 7726. That means spam, and it goes from there to the (Federal Communications Commission).
In this episode, I also spoke to Vox senior political correspondent Christian Paz about the poll. You can watch our full conversation on the podcast, but the interesting piece that ended up on the newsroom floor was a summary of the polls he relies on. What are the different places he goes to look at the data?
His trick, he says, is to look at several different sources. Each of these polls uses a variety of methods, from telephone surveys to online appeals, and “negates a little bit of the error and uncertainty that you might get by just doing a poll in some way. “It seems like it is,” he says. “Such diversity strengthens the overall analysis and understanding of the poll.”
New York Times/Siena College
Susquehanna polls and surveys
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