Following up on the panel at AEJMC about the Internet in the 2008 political season, Garrett M. Graff explains the way Barack Obama’s text message alert about his vice presidential selection is actually a means to a larger end.

But announcing Mr. Obama’s running mate by text message has little to do with proclaiming the selection and everything to do with getting out the vote on Election Day in November. The move should add thousands — and more likely tens or hundreds of thousands — of cellphone numbers to what is already one of the most detailed political databases ever created.

A study conducted during the 2006 elections showed that text-message reminders helped increase turnout among new voters by four percentage points, at a cost of only $1.56 per vote — much cheaper than the $20 or $30 per vote that the offline work of door-to-door canvassing or phone banking costs.

It’s a shrewd way to get new contacts into a campaign database, and I suspect it’s something that more candidates will be doing in future elections. It will be interesting to see whether such TXT GOTV methods actually increase turnout by 4 percent or more. That’s a huge number in a presidential campaign, and if it’s effective, might be Obama’s tipping point.

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