The National Memo says polling and political donations are getting a shake up from mobile technology. Some pollsters think the support for Barack Obama is being vastly underestimated because of the prevalence of cell phones. In fact, pollster Stan Greenberg says cellphone only users are 11% more likely to vote for Obama.
Text message donations are also gaining favor. One estimate says Obama outraised Mitt Romney by a 500-1 margin in text donations.
“A majority of Hispanics are cellphone-only; 4 out of 10 African-Americans are cellphone-only. Young people, of course, are mostly cellphone only,” Greenberg explained. This greatly complicates polling since only live pollsters call cellphones.
President Obama’s campaign was the first ever to accept donations by text. Governor Romney’s campaign joined him shortly thereafter. Though carriers capped the amount of donations an individual could give through this method, it proved to be highly effective for the president.
Could political commercials pay for themselves? By including the easy text-to-donate option at the end of many commercials, the president’s campaign may have created a new model that will definitely benefit campaigns targeting voters with cellphones, which will, before long, be nearly all voters.
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