Rand Paul has a foolproof strategy to win the youth vote: Snapchat
Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) told Politico's Mike Allen he's figured out the way to reach young voters, and it's a doozy: Snapchat.
"We reach thousands of kids that we might not ever have reached before,” Paul said in the interview, reported by The Washington Post. "You have to have something to say to them, too, and we tell them…that the government has no business looking at their phone records, and I think they appreciate that.”
Paul joined Snapchat — an app released in 2011 that allows users to send photos, videos, and messages that automatically delete post-delivery — in 2014, and he has a score of 12,331. Snapchat's user base is huge; it reported 200 million daily users in May, and it is also young; 60 percent of the app's users are between the ages of 18-24.
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Of course, Paul is banking on his young hypothetical voters still thinking Snapchat is cool in a year — a gameplan that could prove as ephemeral as the Snaps themselves.
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Sarah Eberspacher is an associate editor at TheWeek.com. She has previously worked as a sports reporter at The Livingston County Daily Press & Argus and The Arizona Republic. She graduated from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism.
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