More than one million people have registered to vote through Snapchat. To put this number into perspective, last week California Secretary of State Alex Padilla announced that his office has registered 65,000 college-age voters in California.
Peter Hamby, host of Snapchat’s “Good Luck America” and Vanity Fair contributor, said “you can get a ballot sent to you just from being inside Snapchat.”
In 2018, Hamby said Snapchat helped register 500,000 voters, half of whom actually voted.
“The evidence that we saw in 2018 is the best indicator. Turnout among voters under 30 was the highest it had been in a quarter century. [They] narrowly made up a slightly higher share of the total electorate than they did in 2014, but in terms of raw numbers, they showed up in a big way,” Hamby said. “It’s hard to see how voters under 30 are not going to show up in greater numbers than they did in 2018. Voter turnout is just through the roof. Forecasters are projecting the highest turnout maybe ever this century. So you know they’re showing up.”
Hamby said voters under the age of 30 lean Democratic by a 60-30 margin.
“Joe Biden’s biggest issue as it was throughout the primaries and throughout the year isn’t specifically young voters; it’s young voters of color. Those, particularly young men of color, that’s a little bit of a weak spot for Joe Biden, but you know, I think to Biden’s great credit, he has put together a coalition of voters, suburbanites, college-educated white people, and seniors who actually vote. I mean they have a proven track record of going to the polls, unlike unfortunately young voters, and that is a big deal and it’s one significant reason that Biden is a significant favorite heading into the election, which is already underway of course.”
Hamby and other Snapchat employees recognized that many young people don’t watch TV news, read the newspaper, or even scroll through Twitter, which is why they made an effort to bring voting tools directly to the app.
“We have a whole team that deserves way more credit than I do for basically building a full-stack, in-app product where you can register to vote inside Snap, you can find your voting location inside Snap, and you can make a plan to vote inside Snap. And this is a place where so many people are spending time these days, especially under the age of 30 as mentioned,” Hamby said. “Most of the viewers of my show are under 25. At the end of every show, I tell them, ‘Swipe up to vote.’ And then you can swipe up and you’re in an experience where you can put in all of your information and request a ballot. If you’re in a state that’s now sending out ballots, you can get a ballot sent to you just from being inside Snapchat.”
The coronavirus pandemic has already impacted how seniors are voting this year.
“It’s bringing politics home to everybody, kind of like the recession did heading into the 2008 election. It’s an economic story, it’s a healthcare story, and it’s uniting both young people who probably can’t see their grandparents and parents in some cases, but especially old people,” Hamby said. “I mean you could Google this, you could look it up on any social media. There are untold videos of normal, everyday Americans over the age of 60 talking about how they hate the fact they can’t see their family.”
Hamby said Democrats haven’t won the senior vote since the year 2000.
“This has been a piece of the Republican voting coalition for 30 years, and now Joe Biden is winning them, depending on the poll, between 9, 10, some polls even 20 points. And in a state like Florida, a state like Arizona, where you have a lot of retirees, that’s incredibly important. Trump won seniors in Florida over Hillary Clinton by 17 points last time. They’re at parody now, so he’s really chewed into Trump’s advantage there,” Hamby said. “But also the upper Midwest is a very old series of states, and that’s where Trump won the election last time. Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, a state like Iowa. You know, the Republicans aren’t super worried about losing a state like Kansas but they’re polling it now, and that’s because you have a lot of older, white voters in these states who are deeply affected by coronavirus, whose lives are threatened by it, whose livelihoods are threatened by it, and they can’t see their families. So that to me is a story that’s being told about this election that Biden’s winning seniors, but I still think it could be the story of the election if he ends up winning, that he is blowing apart the Republican party’s coalition in part because of seniors.
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