Indivisible helps turn out voters in key battleground states with TextOut

Background

Indivisible is a grassroots organization that works to resist the GOP agenda, elect local champions, and fight for progressive policies.

The Indivisible movement is a progressive grassroots movement of millions of activists nationwide. With a combination of local groups and a national team, Indivisible fights to defeat the rightwing takeover of the American government and build an inclusive democracy.

Indivisible Action, the organization’s PAC, has worked with Civitech’s SMS/MMS platform, TextOut, since 2019 on various outreach activities to voters and activists.

Challenge

In 2019, the team at Indivisible Action was looking for a tool to communicate with its members easily and mobilize them into action. The group also wanted a convenient way to meet their external and internal goals by reaching activists, donors, and volunteers.

Solution

By partnering with TextOut, Indivisible could add another tactic to help meet the organization’s electoral, legislative, activist, and internal goals. As a grassroots organization, Indivisible had several goals: help mobilize voters to elect progressive representatives, pass legislation and advocate for fair government, engage volunteers, and fundraise for the organization.

TextOut is a flexible tool that is an ideal fit for each goal. TextOut’s features make it easy to use for all types of programs.

We’ll share all the types of programs that Indivisible ran with TextOut, and we’ve broken them down by electoral wins, legislative victories, and meeting organizational goals. This success story focuses on electoral wins, but check out our other success stories with Indivisible focused on legislative wins and meeting fundraising and volunteer goals.

Programs

Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman and Representative Matt Cartwright win in 2022

Challenge: In 2022, Democratic Senate candidate John Fetterman faced a fierce battle for the open Pennsylvania Senate seat against TV personality Mehmet Oz. Also, several Democrats running for the House of Representatives were in close races. 

Solution: Indivisible wanted to encourage voters to support progressive candidates in Pennsylvania in 2022, so the group chose TextOut to communicate with and mobilize voters. 

Program: Indivisible sent targeted Get-out-the-vote (GOTV) texts to key districts, encouraging voters to cast a ballot for both Fetterman and their endorsed House candidate using pro-choice messaging. 

Results: Indivisible sent more than 1.1 million texts in Pennsylvania for Sen. Fetterman and Democratic candidates for the House of Representatives. Fetterman won the Senate election, flipping it from Republican control and helping maintain Democratic control of the Senate. In one of the key House races, Matt Cartwright (PA-08) won re-election. 

The 2023 Wisconsin Supreme Court race and a victory for Judge Janet Protasiewicz

Challenge: Indivisible utilized TextOut to help encourage progressives to vote during the Wisconsin state Supreme Court race in 2023. At the time, conservative-leaning justices held the majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, with important potential rulings on abortion and election integrity in the future. 

Solution: Indivisible wanted to help the liberal leaning candidate Judge Janet Protasiewicz win and flip the Supreme Court in Wisconsin, so the organization developed a texting program using TextOut to persuade and turn out voters during the primary and general elections. 

Program: Indivisible ran a multi-step texting campaign that included messages focused on persuasion, GOTV, and household reminders. These texts included information on Judge Janet, polling place location and hours, sample ballots, and encouraged folks to remind their housemates to vote. 

Results: Indivisible Action sent more than 500,000 text messages to Wisconsin voters in the spring of 2023. This includes 140,000 texts in the primary election, followed by 420,000 in the general election, with an impressive 7.9% response rate. Protasiewicz won the Wisconsin Supreme Court seat, which could help secure protection for abortion rights and election integrity in the Badger state. 

By the Numbers

• Indivisible sent more than 1.1 million texts to Pennsylvania voters in 2022 in support of Sen. Fetterman and House candidates

• The organization sent more than 500,000 texts during the Wisconsin Supreme Court race in 2023 using TextOut, with a 7.9% response rate

• Indivisible has sent more than 36 million texts using TextOut since 2019, which includes 392 individual programs

“There's really no other texting platform besides TextOut that would enable us to do the kind of texting we want to do, with dynamic scripts, experimental texting approaches, and volunteer moderation and local group texting that is truly peer-to-peer. TextOut helped us to navigate the many changes of 10DLC registration and is always improving the platform even more with features like power sending. All of it to have rich conversations with voters and our own members that aren't possible any other way! TextOut was essential to moving our voter contact program entirely digital during COVID and helped us win a 2021 Reed Award for Best No-Contact Field Program."