Rock the Vote Tests Text Message Reminders

Rock the Vote has been testing text message reminders and their influence on voter registration. They're finding that, when combined with their online voter registration tool, text message reminders to complete the registration process can boost registration rates by 4%:

Thousands of people download voter registration forms every day from Rock the Vote, but they don't necessarily know the voter registration deadline for their state. We're all busy and it can sometimes take people a few days or weeks before they print and mail the registration form. One of the programs we've been testing during the primaries is the use of text messages to remind young people of their registration deadline. Our early evaluation results indicate that these reminders boosted registration rates of our registrant list by about 4% points!

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We now have updated voter files for Pennsylvania and Indiana and can evaluate our reminders in those states. In Pennsylvania 68.4% of the treatment group was registered compared to 64.5% of the control group - the text message reminder increased registration rates by about 3.9 percentage points. In Indiana the reminder boosted registration by about 4.1% points. When we combine these two tests and add statistical controls we find that the average increase of 4.1% points is statistically significant, so the increased registration is unlikely to be due to random chance.

It appears that text message voter registration reminders can have a big impact on motivating people to send in their registration forms, presumably because voter registration deadlines are not well-known. This result is in line with related research conducted in 2006 which found that text messages were an effective Get Out the Vote (GOTV) tactic - increasing turnout by about 3% points among new registrants.