Table of Contents
Technological advancements have significantly transformed political campaigns and election processes, influencing voter engagement, campaign strategies, and election administration. Such political technology examples include:
- cutting-edge persuasion experiments,
- innovative ways to mobilize voters (like apps to find reluctant voters), and
- heavily researched electioneering methods using ‘big data.’
The smartest campaigns now believe they know who you will vote for even before you do, thanks to how they use voter data.
Watch Webinar: Webinar: Small Campaigns, Big Mistakes
All of this means that while most people assume ‘political technology’ is having viral memes on social media, it is actually the massive enhancement of existing technologies (like making phone calls) and using data in innovative ways – like AI-generated advertising.
Political technology examples: Old vs new
Have a look at the table below to see political technology examples sorted by campaign goals, what kind of new technology they are using, and their real-world usage.
| Campaign goal | Old ways | New political technology | New political technology examples |
| Outreach | Real-life events and fundraising galas to collect money using strategies for community organizing. | Video calling for direct outreach to donors/voters. | Supporters of Kamala Harris organized large-scale Zoom calls – online group video calls, some attracting up to 200,000 participants and raising millions in donations. |
| Data analysis | Hiring people with 40 years of experience to tell campaigns what the trends have been so far. | AI-powered voter profiles, sorting thousands of data points in real time. | Resonate’s 2024 ‘voter landscape’, generated through AI. It analyses “250 million privacy-scrubbed profiles of real people that have tens of thousands of data points.” |
| Advertising | Making TV ads for entire voting blocks, hoping it resonates with the majority of the audience. | Special ads for single issues and targeted distribution on social media | An MIT study found single-issue political ads can be 70 percent more effective. President Trump used this to great effect with his ‘they/them’ ad. And it worked. |
| Voter sentiment | Having staffers listen to calls and let the candidate know what the voter sentiment is. | Using AI to scan the actual phone calls themselves in minutes. | CallHub’s ‘Smart Insights’ scans your campaign’s recorded phone calls, automatically lets you know how many are ‘positive,’ generates summaries of each call, and sorts voters into new dialing lists for follow up based on your goals. |
Each one of these new ‘usages’ was not possible even 15 years ago, but outcomes like ‘raising $1 billion’ or ‘analyzing 250 million profiles in real time’ can now happen, thanks to technology.
So let’s look at this technology, its use, and some now-famous political technology examples.
What is political technology?
Political technology is the creation of new tech, or the utilization of social media in innovative ways, to drive increases in voter outreaches. Political technology helps campaigns dramatically increase their impact through targeted outreach, and the swaying of opinions.
Political campaigns between 2020 and 2024 have increasingly leveraged advanced technologies to enhance voter engagement, streamline operations, and refine messaging. Notable implementations during this period include:
- In June 2024, former President Donald Trump mentioned using AI to generate a speech.
- By September 2024, the Harris campaign had spent over $182 million for digital advertising on Meta and Google.
- In 2020, the Trump campaign introduced a mobile app to provide users with campaign news, event information, and opportunities to donate. It also collected user data to further refine targeting strategies.
The integration of these technologies has transformed political campaigning, allowing for more personalized voter interactions, efficient resource allocation, and dynamic content creation.
Read more: How To Personalize Campaign Messages With Voter Profiling
However, the rapid advancement of these tools also requires a discussion about the ethical implications, particularly on misinformation and the authenticity of political communications.
After all, if an ad packed with misinformation can be generated in minutes using AI, how does the average voter even know what is truth? This is why the federal government is being asked to ban AI-generated content in politics.
Different political technology examples
The technological solutions mentioned below have become integral to modern political campaigns, enabling more strategic and data-driven efforts that enhance voter outreach and engagement. And while this is not an exhaustive list of all political technology, it will give you a good idea about the kind of technology driving elections as a whole.
Phonebanking apps
Political campaigns utilize phonebanking to streamline voter outreach by enabling volunteers to efficiently contact voters, gather information, and promote campaign messages.
Phone calls provide a human touch that can be more persuasive than impersonal communication methods like flyers or billboards. Hearing a volunteer’s voice can positively influence voter perception and engagement.
Phonebanking has overwhelming advantages over old-fashioned calling for political campaigns, driven by technology. They include:
Automated dialers: Automated dialing lets volunteers reach a large number of voters in a short time. A dialer is basically a software that dials a number from a contact list, using algorithms to maximize efficiency and reduce the time taken to connect to each voter. This helps campaigns reach thousands of voters in a matter of a single hour.
Platforms like CallHub provide campaigns with multiple dialers such as a power dialer, or a predictive dialer. depending on their use case.
Read more: Power Dialer vs Predictive Dialer: Which is Right for You?
Efficiency
Beyond dialers, phonebanking software also allows volunteers to:
- join campaigns smoothly,
- be assigned updated contact lists by campaign managers,
- speak to callers as soon as calls are connected.
Data management
Phonebanking software allows for real-time data entry by volunteers after each call – allowing them to add tags to the contact, update their responses to questions, and flag any contact for further follow-up.
Script management
Provide volunteers with standardized scripts to ensure consistent messaging across all calls. This includes branching scripts, enabling volunteers to quickly navigate to the appropriate responses based on the voter’s answers to their questions.
Dynamic caller ID
Voters are less likely to pick up unknown calls from a non-local area code. . CallHub offers a dynamic caller ID, that ensures the campaign’s calls go out from a number with an area code that is local to the voters’ geography.
Smart insights
CallHub uses AI-developed tools to scan all recorded calls and provide accurate call summaries on the spot. This allows thousands of hours of calls to be immediately sorted into sentiments – positive, negative, neutral, and the generation of separate dialing lists for follow-up calls, depending on the sentiment.
This saves campaigns time by replacing manual reviews of thousands of calls with accurate call summaries.
Read more: Is Political Phonebanking Effective? We Think So And Here’s Why
Remember: While phone banking is a valuable tool, its success depends on factors such as the quality of the contact list, the training of volunteers, and the integration of phone banking efforts with other campaign strategies.
| CallHub’s Spam Label Shield |
| The ‘Spam Label Shield’ is a real-time monitoring system that helps identify the health of campaigns and the numbers used as Caller ID in calling campaigns. This system indicates exactly when a number is marked as spam, and replaces the Caller ID of your campaign with a new number. |
Door canvassing apps
Door canvassing apps are digital tools designed to increase the effectiveness of door-to-door political campaigning and ‘Get Out The Vote (GOTV) efforts. They assist campaign volunteers in organizing, tracking, and managing interactions with voters during canvassing efforts.
Features of these tools include:
Data integration
These apps integrate with voter databases, providing canvassers with up-to-date information on constituents, including demographics, voting history, and contact details.
Turf cutting
Campaign managers can divide geographic areas into manageable sections, assigning specific ‘turfs’ to individual canvassers – which they can see on the app.
Scripts
Volunteers can check tailored scripts and surveys within the app during conversations with voters, ensuring consistent messaging and efficient data collection.
Read more: The Perfect Doorstep Interaction in Political Canvassing
Real-time updates
Volunteers can record responses directly into the app in real-time, helping the campaign notice trends and gain insights about voting trends (or the reaction to a particular advertisement) immediately.
Maps
Built-in GPS and maps integration allows volunteers to find the homes they need to visit easily, and allows algorithms to sort the ‘turf’ into efficient routes. For example, the app can sort all voters near a volunteer into ‘nearest to farthest’ and give a route plan for the day to cover the maximum number of homes.
Some famous door canvassing apps include:
MiniVAN: Developed by NGP VAN, MiniVAN is widely adopted by Democratic and progressive campaigns. In 2023, 92% of the 41 million doors knocked were logged through MiniVAN.
Walk: Ecanvasser provides a comprehensive mobile app called Walk, which facilitates efficient outreach campaigns. It offers features like real-time tracking, customizable canvassing interfaces, and easy team onboarding, supporting both in-person and remote canvassing efforts.
| Phone canvassing |
| Phone canvassing lets you reach many people with fewer resources than door-to-door canvassing. While both require some intel on your voters, phone canvassing can be your first point of contact to gather adequate information for door-knocking. Phone Canvassing: The Future of Campaign Canvassing Is Here [2024] |
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tools
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems help organizations manage interactions with current and potential supporters.
This centralized database enables campaigns to segment voters and tailor communications based on:
- where someone lives,
- how they voted,
- how much they donated and
- which events they attended.
Implementing a CRM is essential – since it enables political campaigns to make data-driven decisions that can significantly impact electoral success.
How CRMs are used in political campaigns:
Voter data management: CRMs store all voter information, including contact details, demographics, voting history, event attendance, donations, and issue preferences.
Volunteer coordination: Campaigns use CRMs to manage and assign volunteer activities, track participation, and schedule events.
Fundraising efforts: CRMs track donor contributions and match them to voter databases, facilitating targeted donation appeals. It helps campaigns know which voters donated the most, and which areas to target for more donations.
Communication: CRMs help campaigns generate lists of voters based on specific criteria, making communication more effective. This allows campaigns to craft personalized messages for specific voter groups – based on issues, location, race, gender, past voting history, answers to surveys, etc.
Some popular CRMs include:
Campaign Manager by Aristotle: Developed by Aristotle, this platform integrates fundraising, compliance, and accounting functionalities into a single system, eliminating the need for multiple databases or separate filing products. The platform’s exclusive ‘Donor Insights’ feature provides data on a donor’s potential contributions and comparative analysis based on extensive public records, enhancing fundraising strategies.
Qomon’s Action CRM: This comprehensive platform allows campaigns to centralize and manage supporter data, monitor all engagements, and assign follow-up tasks. The CRM also allows campaigns to take the data to the field – to execute door-to-door canvassing, phone banking, events, and petitions. Uniquely, Qomon connects with over 6,000 tools through its API, allowing for an integrated campaign ecosystem.
| How do you acquire supporters and voters with a CRM? |
| You need an outreach tool like CallHub to help you engage with existing and potential supporters through personalized outreach. You must: Learn more about your supporters through custom survey phone calls. Organize phone banking with your supporters through calling tools. Use å mass texting service to communicate with your supporters. Use Workflow automation to send event invitations, collect RSVPs, and then send reminders to nudge people to attend. |
Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools for political campaigns
In the 2024 election cycle, AI tools are being increasingly utilized by political campaigns, including those of the Democratic Party, to optimize strategies and improve voter engagement.
Here are ways AI tools are mainly used:
Voter targeting
These tools can analyze vast amounts of data from voter files, social media, and public records to predict which voters are most likely to respond to certain messaging or issues.
Chatbots
These bots can provide real-time responses, allowing campaigns to automate communications – allowing voters’ queries to be answered immediately. For example, chatbot systems have been used to inform voters about early voting locations, deadlines, and candidate policies.
AI-generated ads
AI tools are also being used to create and optimize digital ads. The system can test various versions of an ad, assess the responses, and recommend changes to improve performance. Beyond that, AI systems can also generate entire ads based on keywords, allowing for quick turnaround times.
Here are some examples of how AI tools were used in 2024 elections:
Catalist: A good example of machine learning and AI algorithms to provide sophisticated voter data analysis, Catalist has worked with progressive campaigns and unions since 2006 to provide predictive analysis. For instance, it can track shifts in voter sentiment and recommend changes to ad targeting or messaging to better align with the electorate’s concerns.
Vote-E: This chatbot was created by NextGen America, specifically to speak to young voters of color on the platform Discord. Voters could ask it questions like “How do I register to vote?” and get an instant answer.
Poder Latinx ‘Clean energy’ ad: Poder Latinx used Mundial Media’s Cadmus AI to discover the best websites, timings, and keywords to ensure the ad above had the maximum impact wherever it was showcased. Co-founder of Poder Latinx Yadira Sanchez told the Guardian they were “happy with how the campaign reached voters, over-delivering impressions and click-thru rates from Latinos, including finding a 64% Hispanic male audience.”
Voice broadcast
Voice broadcasting is a tool that allows political campaigns to send pre-recorded voice messages to a large number of phone numbers in a short amount of time. It is used for voter mobilization, shares the candidate’s stand on issues, as reminders, and to fundraise.
According to Pew Research, about 33% of voters in 2022 reported receiving some form of political outreach by phone, including pre-recorded voice messages.
The process to send a voice broadcast is as simple as recording your audio message (or use a text-to-speech feature), upload your contact list, and schedule the voice broadcasting campaign.
Software platforms like Callhub enhance this through voice broadcasting features like:
- Integration with a CRM, to import separate lists of voters for personalized voice broadcasts to each segment.
- Sorting the broadcast into receiver timezones, so every voter gets the call at the optimum (and legal) time.
- Connecting interested contacts with live volunteers through ‘press-1’ campaigns. After the automated call plays the message, people can push to talk any digit between 0-9.
- Disconnecting the call if an answering machine is detected, to ensure only real voters hear the message.
Read More: Voice Broadcast Best Practices For Your Next Campaign
Text messaging
Text messaging has become one of the most effective tools for political campaigns to engage with voters, especially since the 2020 election cycle. During the 2020 election cycle, Americans received an estimated 11.6 billion political text messages in the last three months leading up to the election.
Text messages had a reported response rate of 12-20%, far surpassing email’s average response rate of 2%. Voters were also more likely to engage with personalized or interactive texts.
While this sounds very early-2000s, technology has enhanced text messages keeping the method competitive. We shall see how technology does this in the two main forms of text messaging.
The two main forms of text messaging by political campaigns are:
Peer-to-peer texting
At its heart, peer-to-peer texting is when a volunteer texts someone and has a real, one-on-one personal conversation, encouraging them to vote or donate to the campaign.
However, platforms like CallHub enhance this simple idea from ‘one volunteer randomly messaging someone from a campaign phone’ to an organized system that maximizes impact. CallHub’s peer-to-peer texting protocol has features like:
- A mobile app that allows volunteers to be assigned contacts, so they can message from the comfort of their own phone, in their own home.
- Branching scripts with multiple options, so volunteers can copy and paste answers to questions about policy or future plans, reducing human errors and creative interpretation.
- Mass opening texts being sent as the first message to all contacts, so volunteers can focus their attention on replying to voters who respond, instead of sending opening texts.
- Data entry in the app after each conversation, so follow-ups can be automated through Workflows.
- Surveys in the app itself, so the results can be instantly updated and synced with the main CRM database.
Mass texting service
This is the most common kind of text messaging done during campaigns, in which a text message is sent to all contacts who have opted in to hear from the campaign.
As mentioned above, platforms like CallHub help campaigns take this idea to the next level, through features designed to make it smoother and more impactful. Features like:
- 10DLC numbers: A 10DLC registration flags your messages as legitimate, ensuring that they aren’t marked as ‘spam’ and are delivered to a large number of people during crucial periods of the campaign. CallHub will help campaigns register for and obtain a 10DLC number.
- Automated texts: Auto-reply text messages are pre-written messages that are automatically sent in response to incoming text messages, by ‘reading’ a keyword that the voter has sent in reply to the mass text.
- Multiple formats: The texts can be plain text or an MMS with pictures and videos, to increase engagement.
- Tracked URLs: The texts can be sent with actionable requests for donations, with trackable shortened URLs. So campaigns know which donors donated, how much, and from which message.
So technology helps change text messages from grunt work that takes up all the time of the campaign staff, to active ways to reach out to all voters, while still having meaningful conversations with the interested ones.
Fundraising technology in political campaigns
While political campaigns in America have gathered donations since 1776, the efficiency of those donations and the amounts collected have been historic. Between January 2023 and April 2024, US political campaigns collected around $8.6 billion.
This has been in great part thanks to technology making it easier to donate, streamlining the process of finding donors and collecting the donations, and helping automate compliance filing requirements.
Here are some of the features that fundraising apps provide campaigns:
Multiple sources: Fundraising apps provide user-friendly platforms where contributions can be made via credit cards, debit cards, or digital payment systems from a wide supporter base.
Recurring contributions: Many apps allow donors to set up recurring donations, providing campaigns with a steady and predictable revenue stream throughout the election cycle.
Compliance: Fundraising apps assist in maintaining compliance with Federal Election Commission (FEC) regulations by tracking contributions and generating necessary reports.
Donor tracking: No one likes to be asked over and over again. Fundraising apps help campaigns keep track of who donated, when, and how much, so requests for more donations can be spaced apart.
Some fundraising apps that were popular during the 2024 election cycle are:
ActBlue: Established in 2004, ActBlue is a nonprofit fundraising platform predominantly used by Democratic candidates and progressive organizations. It has facilitated over $13.7 billion in contributions since its inception, emphasizing small-dollar donations to support a wide array of campaigns and causes.
NationBuilder: This platform provides tools for website creation, fundraising, and supporter management. It has been employed by various political entities across the spectrum, including the campaigns of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump, to build and mobilize their supporter bases.
Ready to take your campaign’s digital efforts to the next level?
The rise of political technology apps has revolutionized how campaigns in America connect with voters, manage resources, and secure funding.
As campaigns grow increasingly digital, these tools not only enhance operational efficiency but also democratize political engagement, making it easier than ever for citizens to support the causes and candidates they believe in.
These innovations are not just conveniences—they’re game-changers that define the future of elections in America.
For any campaign looking to step up their game, it is critical to get onto platforms like CallHub, so your digital outreach, fundraising, and communication game can be taken to the next level.
