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<\/a><\/figure>\n\nSome forms of outreach are more common than others \u2013 with some key differences in the ways Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton supporters have been reached by the campaigns.<\/p>\n\n
An early look at voters\u2019 experience with outreach finds that, as of a few months into the campaign, 28% of voters have received an email from at least one of the campaigns, another 22% have received printed mail in support of a candidate, 17% said they got a pre-recorded phone call or \u201crobocall\u201d and 10% said they received a call from a live person.<\/p>\n\n
This is according to a Pew Research Center survey, conducted August 16- September 12, 2016 among 4,538 adults, including 3,941 registered voters, using the Pew Research Center\u2019s American Trends Panel<\/a>. The Center will continue to track voters\u2019 experiences with the campaigns\u2019 outreach efforts in the next month.<\/p>\n\n Voters supporting Donald Trump are more likely than Hillary Clinton supporters to report having received a pre-recorded phone call from one of the campaigns (23% vs. 13%), while Clinton supporters are more likely than Trump supporters to say they have received an email (32% vs 26%). Nearly identical percentages of voters supporting Trump and Clinton report having received a piece of printed mail (25% of Trump supporters, 22% of Clinton supporters) or a phone call from a live person (11% of supporters from each campaign).<\/p>\n\n Of those who have been contacted on behalf of one of the presidential candidate a third of all registered voters have been contacted only<\/em> in support of Clinton (35%) and about as many have received contact from only <\/em>the Trump campaign or supporters (30%); an additional 30% say they have been contacted in some form by both campaigns.<\/p>\n\n Most supporters of both Clinton (62%) and Trump (59%) have only been contacted on behalf of the candidate they plan to vote for. In part this reflects the effectiveness of modern campaigns in targeting their mobilization efforts<\/a> to those who support their candidate. About a third of Trump supporters (32%) and a quarter of Clinton backers (27%) have been reached by efforts on behalf of both campaigns, while very few have only been contacted on behalf of the candidate they do not back.<\/p>\n\n While overall, voters report having been roughly equally likely to be contacted on behalf of both campaigns, this is not the case across each different type of contact. For instance, among the 28% of voters who have received an email, contact on behalf of Clinton is more common: 68% have received an email from Clinton or groups supporting her, including 43% who have heard only on her behalf. By comparison, 52% have received an email from Trump or groups supporting him and just 29% have been contacted on behalf of Trump but not Clinton. A similar pattern is seen among the just 5% of voters who have received a text on behalf of a candidate.<\/p>\n\n And voters are more likely to report in-person contact on behalf of Clinton than on behalf of Trump. Among the small share (just 3%) of voters who have been visited on behalf of a candidate, 62% say they have received a visit from just the Clinton campaign or her supporters, compared with 14% from just the Trump campaign or groups supporting him; 13% say they were visited on behalf of both candidates. And those who received phone calls from a live person were also more likely to have spoken with someone supporting Clinton.<\/p>\n\n One area where supporters of Trump\u2019s candidacy have been more likely to reach out to voters is through the use of pre-recorded phone calls or robocalls. Fully 42% of people who received pre-recorded phone calls say they solely received these calls on behalf of Trump, 24% have solely received them in support of Clinton. About three-in-ten (29%) voters who have received robocalls say they have heard from both Clinton and Trump supporters.<\/p>\n\n There are significant demographic differences in voter contact. Older voters, in general, are more likely to say they\u2019ve been reached by the 2016 campaigns. Over half of those 65 and older (56%) have reported receiving at least one form of contact by the campaigns, a stark comparison to the 37% of voters 18-29 who say the same. This pattern repeats itself across many forms of contact, with nearly four-in-ten voters over the age of 65 (38%) and just 8% of voters under 30 receiving a piece of printed mail about the campaign. Similarly, older voters are nearly three times more likely to report receiving a pre-recorded phone call and two times more likely to report receiving a live call. There is little difference across age groups, however, in the percent of voters who report receiving an email.<\/p>\n\n Voters who have voted in previous elections are more likely to say they have been contacted. On the whole, about half of those who voted in the 2012 general election (49%) said they received contact from the campaigns, compared to about a third (34%) of those who didn\u2019t vote in 2012.<\/p>\n\n Voters who use social media sites have been about equally likely to follow Trump and Clinton on social media, though only about two-in-ten voters who use each site follow either or both candidates on Facebook (18%) or Twitter (17%), and just 6% follow one or both of the candidates on Instagram.<\/p>\n\n <\/p>\n\n The American Trends Panel (ATP), created by the Pew Research Center, is a nationally representative panel of randomly selected U.S. adults living in households. Respondents who self-identify as internet users and who provided an email address participate in the panel via monthly self-administered Web surveys, and those who do not use the internet or decline to provide an email address participate via the mail. The panel is being managed by Abt SRBI.<\/p>\n\n The analysis in this report is based on 4,538 respondents, including 3,941 registered voters, who participated in the August 16-September 12, 2016 wave of the panel (4,195 by Web and 343 by mail). The margin of sampling error for the full sample of 4,538 respondents is plus or minus 2.4 percentage points and the margin of sampling error among registered voters is plus or minus 2.6 percentage points.<\/p>\n\n Members of the American Trends Panel were recruited from two large, national landline and cellphone random-digit-dial (RDD) surveys conducted in English and Spanish. At the end of each survey, respondents were invited to join the panel. The first group of panelists was recruited from the 2014 Political Polarization and Typology Survey, conducted January 23rd to March 16th, 2014. Of the 10,013 adults interviewed, 9,809 were invited to take part in the panel and a total of 5,338 agreed to participate.[1. When data collection for the 2014 Political Polarization and Typology Survey began, non-internet users were subsampled at a rate of 25%, but a decision was made shortly thereafter to invite all non-internet users to join. In total, 83% of non-internet users were invited to join the panel.] The second group of panelists was recruited from the 2015 Survey on Government, conducted August 27th to October 4th, 2015. Of the 6,004 adults interviewed, all were invited to join the panel, and 2,976 agreed to participate.[2. Respondents to the 2014 Political Polarization and Typology Survey who indicated that they are internet users but refused to provide an email address were initially permitted to participate in the American Trends Panel by mail, but were no longer permitted to join the panel after February 6, 2014. Internet users from the 2015 Survey on Government who refused to provide an email address were not permitted to join the panel.]<\/p>\n\n Participating panelists provided either a mailing address or an email address to which a welcome packet, a monetary incentive and future survey invitations could be sent. Panelists also receive a small monetary incentive after participating in each wave of the survey.<\/p>\n\n The Web component of the August 16-September 12, 2016 wave had a response rate of 81% (4,195 responses among 5,150 Web-based individuals in the panel); the mail component had a response rate of 76% (343 responses among 454 non-Web individuals in the panel). Taking account of the combined, weighted response rate for the recruitment surveys (10.0%) and attrition from panel members who were removed at their request or for inactivity, the cumulative response rate for the August 16-September 12, 2016 ATP wave is 2.9%.[3. Approximately once per year, panelists who have not participated in multiple consecutive waves are removed from the panel. These cases are counted in the denominator of cumulative response rates.]<\/p>\n\n The ATP data were weighted in a multi-step process that begins with a base weight incorporating the respondents\u2019 original survey selection probability and the fact that in 2014 some panelists were subsampled for invitation to the panel. Next, an adjustment was made for the fact that the propensity to join the panel and remain an active panelist varied across different groups in the sample. The final step in the weighting uses an iterative technique that matches gender, age, education, race, Hispanic origin and region to parameters from the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2014 American Community Survey. Population density is weighted to match the 2010 U.S. Decennial Census. Telephone service is weighted to estimates of telephone coverage for 2016 that were projected from the July-December 2015 National Health Interview Survey. Volunteerism is weighted to match the 2013 Current Population Survey Volunteer Supplement. It also adjusts for party affiliation using an average of the three most recent Pew Research Center general public telephone surveys. Internet access is adjusted using a measure from the 2015 Survey on Government. Frequency of internet use is weighted to an estimate of daily internet use projected to 2016 from the 2013 Current Population Survey Computer and Internet Use Supplement. Sampling errors and statistical tests of significance take into account the effect of weighting. Interviews are conducted in both English and Spanish, but the Hispanic sample in the American Trends Panel is predominantly native born and English speaking.<\/p>\n\n The following table shows the unweighted sample sizes and the error attributable to sampling that would be expected at the 95% level of confidence for different groups in the survey:<\/p>\n\n Sample sizes and sampling errors for other subgroups are available upon request.<\/p>\n\n In addition to sampling error, one should bear in mind that question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of opinion polls.<\/p>\n\n Pew Research Center undertakes all polling activity, including calls to mobile telephone numbers, in compliance with the Telephone Consumer Protection Act and other applicable laws.<\/p>\n\n Pew Research Center is a nonprofit, tax-exempt 501(c)(3) organization and a subsidiary of The Pew Charitable Trusts, its primary funder.<\/p>\n\n![](\"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/20\/2016\/10\/10-6-2016_2.png\")
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<\/a><\/figure>\n\n<\/a>Methodology<\/h2>\n\n
Survey conducted August 16-September 12, 2016<\/h4>\n\n
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