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Research on political participation has long emphasized differences between Americans who donate money to political campaigns and Americans who perform other kinds of political activity. It’s unclear, however, if there are distinctions in how campaigns use advertisements to solicit donations and mobilize grassroots voters. Analyzing Facebook ad data from thousands of ads, donations, and e-mail sign-ups from a recent statewide gubernatorial campaign, we show that campaigns deploy ad themes that vary in their success at attracting donations and mobilizing grassroots activists. Ad effectiveness varies by region of the state as well. Ideological extremity boosts small donations and campaign sign-ups. However, less ideological campaign messages are also effective, perhaps because recipient lists are already curated to include the candidate’s likely supporters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research examines variation in response to mass email communications by a large and sophisticated political campaign over the course of the 2018 election cycle. Computational text analysis is utilized to generate and catalogue the most frequent themes across a body of 690 separate email messages. We find open rates vary somewhat by the subject key words of messages as well as when they were sent. In addition, small donations received through email are also responsive to the contents of messages, controlling for timing and other relevant factors. Given the very low cost associated with using email to communicate with supporters, it appears to be an effective means for harvesting small contributions and of providing opportunities for large numbers of voters to elevate their level of participation in the electoral process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Not all aspects of a campaign are issue-oriented, nor are many voters. A candidate builds mass support largely by appearing warm, friendly, and likable, not only by propagating their viewpoints on controversial issues. Based on a prominent candidate's Twitter accounts and the associated analytics, our research analyzes the online content and reaction to every post across a four-year period, both before and after a major general election. Twitter's analytic measures demonstrate how a campaign uses social media to accomplish very different outreach goals. Warm and non-politically oriented messages attract broad support in the form of audience likes but are not retweeted with as much frequency as messages that are less liked but more politically pointed. The undeniable popularity of personal, earnest messages underscores the power of the social media platform to present candidates in an approachable and convivial way, despite the necessity of taking positions on difficult issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]