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Sick of political text messages? Michigan hit with more than 52 million since mid-September, report says

Posted at 5:52 PM, Oct 30, 2020
and last updated 2020-10-30 18:24:55-04

If you think you're the only one who's had their phone buzzing with political text messages for the past few months, rest assured you are not alone.

According to RoboKiller, people across Michigan have been hit with more than 52 million political texts since mid-September. The breakdown, according to the company citing their Political Insights Report, is 35,186,262 texts attributed to Republicans and 17,600,926 attributed to Democrats.

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Across the U.S., RoboKiller's report says more than 2 billion political messages have been sent from September 22 through October 22.

The company says data shows that Republicans have sent 1.4 billion political texts compared to Democrats 615 million political texts over that time period, with more than 40 percent of the messages targeted toward swing states and the states whose residents are actively voting.

The reason for the large amount of political texts is due to a new technology called "peer-to-peer texting," according to RoboKiller. The technology reportedly sends large batches of text messages from a phone number as opposed to an audiodialer. It's a workaround, according to RoboKiller, which notes in a press release that texts from autodialers that don't have recipients' consent are illegal.

At the time the press release was issued, the top 5 most politically texted states included California (234,998,871), Texas (219,314,179), New York (183, 606,656), Florida (138,998,709) and Pennsylvania (94,295,766).

To view RoboKiller's Political Robocall and Text Insights, click here.