Obama’s Texting for Turnout during the Potomac Primary

The Post’s Jose Antonio Vargas is reporting on the Obama campaign’s election-day SMS strategy, clearly aimed at boosting voter turnout:

Early this morning, Sen. Barack Obama sent the first of three text messages to supporters who’ve signed up to his messaging program and live in the D.C. area. It’s a jam-packed message, starting out with an Obama quote, then asking supporters to forward the text to their friends. Most importantly, the text provides an 866 number to call to find your polling location. All you’d have to do is click on the number on your cellphone to make the free call.

Jose has detail about the campaign’s ability to target messages by zip code, and also about how quiet they’re being about the size of their list and its response rate. Texting for turnout isn’t an original idea, but this campaign seems focused on implementing it well — a part of the campaign that future online political professionals will look to as a model?

– cpd