Republicans Are Spending $60 Million on a Digital Get-Out-the-Vote Campaign

The Trump campaign’s prolific texting operation, which is largely devoted to fund-raising at the moment, has helped set the tone. “It’s so urgent we BOTH texted you” a recent message from “Pres. Trump & VP Pence” said. The R.N.C. texts, Mr. Walters said, will have a similar feel.

The $60 million investment is a marked jump for the party’s digital get-out-the-vote program, which it invested just $2.9 million in for the 2016 cycle.

“It’s a new priority from the G.O.P. because typically this is not the type of money they would invest in that type of campaign,” said Filippo Trevisan, a professor of public communication at American University. “They’ve had get-out-the-vote efforts in the past but never to the level that we’re seeing.”

But, Mr. Trevisan noted, a massively expanded digital get-out-the-vote program is relatively untested, at least at this scale.

“It’s difficult to say whether they’re going to work or not for get-out-the-vote, because get-out-the-vote efforts really work best when you can involve some contact with the person that you are trying to persuade,” Mr. Trevisan said.

At the core of the new program is a revamped website that aims to be the single tool all ads push voters toward. The site is linked to the party’s data system, and will help it maintain digital tabs on its voters as well as collect data on online visitors.

The campaign will utilize nearly every social media platform, including Facebook and Snapchat, as well as ad space on YouTube. Although the site has seemingly endless advertising real estate among its billions of videos, there is a finite amount of what is known as “premium inventory” on the platform, namely in home page takeovers and unskippable pre-roll ads.