Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum didn’t seem to have a prayer of winning last week’s Democratic gubernatorial primary in Florida. Gillum’s opponents spent nearly 15 times as much as he did, and late polls had him trailing badly.
But Gillum spent much of his campaign war chest on the hottest outreach tool of the season: He reached out to voters with inexpensive text messages, instead of costly TV ads or annoying phone calls. And he relied on polling data gathered on the Internet instead of with landline telephones.
In the end, Gillum scored the biggest upset of the primary season, winning with 34 percent of the vote. His polling company, Change Research, had predicted that Gillum would win with 33 percent of the vote, making it the only pollster to predict his victory. CONT.
Hiawatha Bray, Boston Globe