How Snapchat Wants to Win the 2016 Election
Snapchat is getting a lot of attention for its presidential ambitions.
In an effort to both appeal to the youth vote and bolster its events coverage built on a growing volume of video posted by its users, the app recently posted a job opening for a Content Analyst in Politics & News.
The new hire will curate photos and videos for the app’s “Our Story” curated events coverage of the presidential race and other news events. That stories feature has already proven to be a massive success. On average, Snapchat’s Our Stories draws around 20 million people in a 24-hour window, director of partnerships at Snapchat, Ben Schwerin, told Re/code. The three-day story in April about Coachella, the music festival, generated 40 million unique visitors.
Political events might not be draws on that same scale, but Snapchat apparently believes its massive influence with younger Americans could attract millions millennials to engage in the political process at a time when voter turnout is at its lowest levels since World War II. In the 2012 mid-term election, the national turnout rate was 35.9 percent. Of that, only 13 percent were between the ages of 18 and 29.
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Boasting more than 100 million daily users, Snapchat is valued at $16 billion — giving it the reach and the financial clout to become a force in 2016 campaign coverage. About 60 percent of U.S. smartphone users aged between 13 and 24 have used the app, according to The Financial Times. The largest demographic of users is between the ages of 18 and 24 (45 percent), followed by those between 25 and 34 (26 percent).
To capitalize on that user base, Snapchat recently hired former CNN political reporter Peter Hamby to oversee its expanding news team. Snapchat wants to promote content from debates, rallies, appearances and other election events and allow users to follow along. But this isn’t purely an experiment in civic participation. Candidates can pay for political ads to appear on the social media app.
The social media app has an ace up its sleeve to incentivize candidates to purchase ads. The app already has age-gating technology and a form of geographic targeting. Originally put into place to make sure underage kids wouldn’t see alcohol ads, the age gate could be used to reach only voting-age users. The geographic targeting allows Our Stories to only be viewable by people in the same city or area, so politicians could target specific areas, especially ones in a tight race.
Snapchat, best known as the service that allows users to send disappearing photos, claims that ads inserted into “Our Stories” have an advantage over other social media advertisements because they leave more lasting impressions.
If campaigns buy into that and turn to Snapchat as a way to connect with a hard-to-reach demographic, the social media company could be the big winner in the 2016 election.
GOP Tax Cuts Getting Less Popular, Poll Finds
Friday marked the six-month anniversary of President Trump’s signing the Republican tax overhaul into law, and public opinion of the law is moving in the wrong direction for the GOP. A Monmouth University survey conducted earlier this month found that 34 percent of the public approves of the tax reform passed by Republicans late last year, while 41 percent disapprove. Approval has fallen by 6 points since late April and disapproval has slipped 3 points. The percentage of people who aren’t sure how they feel about the plan has risen from 16 percent in April to 24 percent this month.
Other findings from the poll of 806 U.S. adults:
- 19 percent approve of the job Congress is doing; 67 percent disapprove
- 40 percent say the country is heading in the right direction, up from 33 percent in April
- Democrats hold a 7-point edge in a generic House ballot
Special Tax Break Zones Defined for All 50 States
The U.S. Treasury has approved the final group of opportunity zones, which offer tax incentives for investments made in low-income areas. The zones were created by the tax law signed in December.
Bill Lucia of Route Fifty has some details: “Treasury says that nearly 35 million people live in the designated zones and that census tracts in the zones have an average poverty rate of about 32 percent based on figures from 2011 to 2015, compared to a rate of 17 percent for the average U.S. census tract.”
Click here to explore the dynamic map of the zones on the U.S. Treasury website.
Map of the Day: Affordable Care Act Premiums Since 2014
Axios breaks down how monthly premiums on benchmark Affordable Care Act policies have risen state by state since 2014. The average increase: $481.
Obamacare Repeal Would Lead to 17.1 Million More Uninsured in 2019: Study
A new analysis by the Urban Institute finds that if the Affordable Care Act were eliminated entirely, the number of uninsured would rise by 17.1 million — or 50 percent — in 2019. The study also found that federal spending would be reduced by almost $147 billion next year if the ACA were fully repealed.
Your Tax Dollars at Work
Mick Mulvaney has been running the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau since last November, and by all accounts the South Carolina conservative is none too happy with the agency charged with protecting citizens from fraud in the financial industry. The Hill recently wrote up “five ways Mulvaney is cracking down on his own agency,” and they include dropping cases against payday lenders, dismissing three advisory boards and an effort to rebrand the operation as the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection — a move critics say is intended to deemphasize the consumer part of the agency’s mission.
Mulvaney recently scored a small victory on the last point, changing the sign in the agency’s building to the new initials. “The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau does not exist,” Mulvaney told Congress in April, and now he’s proven the point, at least when it comes to the sign in his lobby (h/t to Vox and thanks to Alan Zibel of Public Citizen for the photo, via Twitter).
