How SMS Campaigns Impacted the 2024 Presidential Election
In the months leading up to the 2024 Presidential Election, political organizations and consultants sent out tens of millions of texts to the American voting public via Textla. These SMS marketing campaigns played a crucial role in influencing the election results, and they also reflected a national sentiment in favor of President Trump over Vice President Harris.
In this report, we aggregated and anonymized tens of millions of texts sent via Textla in support of the two campaigns between October and November 2024. The results of this report paint an important picture of how the electorate felt about each candidate heading into the election.
Read the report below:
The results of the campaigns sent via Textla reflected a strong bias in favor of Trump across the board, with opt-out rates and negative replies to pro-Harris texts being significantly higher than the opt-out rates and replies to pro-Trump texts.
Texts sent in support of Vice President Harris had an opt-out rate of roughly 4%, whereas texts sent in support of President Trump had a 1.5% opt-out rate. In other words, recipients of pro-Harris texts were roughly 2.5X more likely to opt out of receiving future texts than recipients of pro-Trump texts. These results matched those of the Election, indicating higher favorability for Trump across the voter base who received these text campaigns.
Based on this data, SMS metrics can provide critical insights for future Presidential campaigns, as SMS communications create a virtually immediate feedback loop about voter sentiment for a given candidate.
The data on SMS read and response rate is well documented, with 98% of texts being read by recipients and 90% being read within 3 minutes of receipt. The sentiment and volume of responses to campaign texts, particularly in swing states, can provide important insights into how a candidate is performing with constituents.
With millions of dollars being spent every four years on SMS marketing for Presidential campaigns, it’s safe to say that SMS marketing should be studied by campaign advisors and analysts to get a true pulse of election momentum during a campaign.
