Poll: Most U.S. Voters Hit By Robo Calls

Start your day with TPM.
Sign up for the Morning Memo newsletter

Any way you cut it, it’s clear that the robo call really arrived this year — and was mostly overlooked as a prominent new weapon in campaign strategists’ arsenals.

Underscoring its reputation as a “stealth” campaign tactic, a new poll shows that two-thirds of registered voters got at least one robo call during the midterm election season.

The poll, conducted by The Pew Internet and American Life Project, found that 64% of registered U.S. voters got at least one recorded phone call in 2006. And that’s across the country — you can bet that percentage was much higher in competitive districts.

Only direct mail was a more popular method for campaigns, reaching 71% of voters. But the robo call blew out other more traditional forms of campaigning like going door to door (only 18% of voters were reached that way) or getting a phone call from a real live human being (24%). Pew didn’t even bother to track robo calling in 2004.

So, what percentage of those who got a robo call got two, three, or a dozen more? How many got six calls in a row? We still don’t know.

Latest Muckraker
Comments
Masthead Masthead
Founder & Editor-in-Chief:
Executive Editor:
Managing Editor:
Associate Editor:
Editor at Large:
General Counsel:
Publisher:
Head of Product:
Director of Technology:
Associate Publisher:
Front End Developer:
Senior Designer: