As someone who has volunteered text banking and phone banking for multiple Democratic campaigns, I have first hand experience that these scam PAC's are extremely detrimental.
People are now conditioned to assume that any political communication they receive is from a scam PAC, even people who are predisposed to agree with and support Democrats. So when a real person actually texts or calls them, it makes them much less likely to engage. Often, their first response is, "Go away, stop messaging me. You've already texted or called me a dozen times." Even if this is the first time that campaign is engaging with them.
So not only are these scammers cannibalizing money that should otherwise be going to candidates, they are also cannibalizing attention and just burning out potential supporters. It's a huge problem.
I appreciate this deep dive and have long avoided donating to anything other than my local municipal D party, the county party, or local candidates. Is there a reason you've not done this same assessment with GOP PACs? Thanks!
I've told my mom and uncle to stop giving to any national PAC that texts or emails them. Thankfully, they didn't succumb to these scams.
Along the same lines of what I wrote in my post about these spammy tactics: the “400% matches”, the negative doom and gloom rhetoric, and donation shaming tactics that Democrats have adopted from these Scam PACS are disrespecting our donors at best and taking advantage of elderly, digital-illiterate seniors at worst.
We need to get back to fostering trust with our base and respect for our supporters. We need to show everyone that Democrats are doing the work for the American people and utilize these large digital platforms to communicate that.
Thanks, Adam, for this second installment which separates ActBlue from Spam PACs. The adoption of the Spam PAC 'rhetoric' in fund-raising messages from Democratic party leadership is a problem. It's an important part of the party's 'messaging' problem — and helps to account for the low approval of the party in recent polls.
As McLuhan put it: "The medium is the message".
And as Samuel Delany wrote: Put in opposition to "style," there is not such thing as "content."
It's a common, and in my opinion fallacious, claim about direct-'mail' marketing — and these Spam messages are not just raising money, they are marketing the Democratic party — that there is no cost associated with sending out hundreds or thousands of pieces of mail for every piece of mail that gets a hit. The cost, obviously, is the credibility of the sender: the hundreds of thousands of "deleted" messages sour the recipient on the sender — which is all-too-often a leader of the party or a party organization.
I am an elder law attorney and have seen this phenomenon in my practice (and it isn't just D's - the R's and their associated groups do it too). A contributing factor in some cases is that the elder doesn't recall having donated $200 to the very same group or candidate just a few hours or days earlier. Legislation limiting appeals to the same donor within a specified time frame could help prevent this.
I'm thinking about putting together some programming for my liberal mainline church (ECLA) where I have no doubt some members have been targeted. I wonder in your research if you have identified conservative groups that would experience the same from conservative PACs?
Thank you for this research. Most remarkable is the silence of top Democrats in response. I have been calling my CA senators and have not received an acceptable response. Senator Padilla's office actually told me he could not respond due to the Hatch Act, which does not apply at all. I hope we all will continue to apply pressure on this issue, I think it is a reason the brand is so damaged and continues to have low approval even as the Republicans' approval sinks.
With the billions of dollars, and probably considerable dark-side scientific research behind it, elder scams are really, really big money. It pisses me off, but I am not surprised that political fundraising is getting in on the act.
A really interesting followup if you can get the data is looking AT the various fundraising examples, how much of the fundraising goes to overhead, both percentage and total?
Is the AOC/Bernie/Warren strategy in the end not only better for trust but does it raise more money that is actually usable by the candidates vs money for the consultants?
The author did that a few days ago. Check the post "The Mothership Vortex", it discuss that at length. p.s the answer is that, as expected, most of the money goes to the operators of these PACs and not the candidates.
It covers the percentage but not the total. It COULD be the case that 20% of evil strategy exceeds 80% of good strategy in total money raised. I doubt it does however, and having those numbers explicit, and an explicit comparison of both % overhead and total net for the side by side cases would be extremely valuable in breaking the addition to elder abuse.
As someone who has volunteered text banking and phone banking for multiple Democratic campaigns, I have first hand experience that these scam PAC's are extremely detrimental.
People are now conditioned to assume that any political communication they receive is from a scam PAC, even people who are predisposed to agree with and support Democrats. So when a real person actually texts or calls them, it makes them much less likely to engage. Often, their first response is, "Go away, stop messaging me. You've already texted or called me a dozen times." Even if this is the first time that campaign is engaging with them.
So not only are these scammers cannibalizing money that should otherwise be going to candidates, they are also cannibalizing attention and just burning out potential supporters. It's a huge problem.
I appreciate this deep dive and have long avoided donating to anything other than my local municipal D party, the county party, or local candidates. Is there a reason you've not done this same assessment with GOP PACs? Thanks!
I've told my mom and uncle to stop giving to any national PAC that texts or emails them. Thankfully, they didn't succumb to these scams.
I would be interested to know what the GOP numbers are too
Along the same lines of what I wrote in my post about these spammy tactics: the “400% matches”, the negative doom and gloom rhetoric, and donation shaming tactics that Democrats have adopted from these Scam PACS are disrespecting our donors at best and taking advantage of elderly, digital-illiterate seniors at worst.
We need to get back to fostering trust with our base and respect for our supporters. We need to show everyone that Democrats are doing the work for the American people and utilize these large digital platforms to communicate that.
How do we get this spam to stop?
I’m curious why these data are only about Democrats. The Trump campaigns seem the worst offenders for tactics like phony matching opportunities
well sure, MAGA is far, far worse. But it is not the job of this research, and
all of us to police, Trump. That is a diversion.
Thanks, Adam, for this second installment which separates ActBlue from Spam PACs. The adoption of the Spam PAC 'rhetoric' in fund-raising messages from Democratic party leadership is a problem. It's an important part of the party's 'messaging' problem — and helps to account for the low approval of the party in recent polls.
As McLuhan put it: "The medium is the message".
And as Samuel Delany wrote: Put in opposition to "style," there is not such thing as "content."
It's a common, and in my opinion fallacious, claim about direct-'mail' marketing — and these Spam messages are not just raising money, they are marketing the Democratic party — that there is no cost associated with sending out hundreds or thousands of pieces of mail for every piece of mail that gets a hit. The cost, obviously, is the credibility of the sender: the hundreds of thousands of "deleted" messages sour the recipient on the sender — which is all-too-often a leader of the party or a party organization.
I am an elder law attorney and have seen this phenomenon in my practice (and it isn't just D's - the R's and their associated groups do it too). A contributing factor in some cases is that the elder doesn't recall having donated $200 to the very same group or candidate just a few hours or days earlier. Legislation limiting appeals to the same donor within a specified time frame could help prevent this.
I have similar concerns about the proliferation of non-profits which mostly just raise money to pay their executive staff.
Until this is cleared up by Democratic leaders, I'm back to old school donating. Check in the mail directly to the campaign.
Would love more transparency on the age stats. where did those come from?
The age data comes from a paper I recently co-authored with Jake Grumbach. We detail the process in the paper, which you can find here: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4892936
I don't understand how/why one person donates thousands of times to the same recipient.
I'm thinking about putting together some programming for my liberal mainline church (ECLA) where I have no doubt some members have been targeted. I wonder in your research if you have identified conservative groups that would experience the same from conservative PACs?
Thank you for this research. Most remarkable is the silence of top Democrats in response. I have been calling my CA senators and have not received an acceptable response. Senator Padilla's office actually told me he could not respond due to the Hatch Act, which does not apply at all. I hope we all will continue to apply pressure on this issue, I think it is a reason the brand is so damaged and continues to have low approval even as the Republicans' approval sinks.
With the billions of dollars, and probably considerable dark-side scientific research behind it, elder scams are really, really big money. It pisses me off, but I am not surprised that political fundraising is getting in on the act.
Have party officials responded to this information?
A really interesting followup if you can get the data is looking AT the various fundraising examples, how much of the fundraising goes to overhead, both percentage and total?
Is the AOC/Bernie/Warren strategy in the end not only better for trust but does it raise more money that is actually usable by the candidates vs money for the consultants?
The author did that a few days ago. Check the post "The Mothership Vortex", it discuss that at length. p.s the answer is that, as expected, most of the money goes to the operators of these PACs and not the candidates.
It covers the percentage but not the total. It COULD be the case that 20% of evil strategy exceeds 80% of good strategy in total money raised. I doubt it does however, and having those numbers explicit, and an explicit comparison of both % overhead and total net for the side by side cases would be extremely valuable in breaking the addition to elder abuse.