MTV has launched a new media campaign geared toward millennial voters in the 2016 presidential election with support from numerous progressive organizations including Planned Parenthood and Everytown for Gun Safety.
The network’s Elect This campaign will feature short-form digital video series aimed at informing younger voters about the issues that matter most to them, including gun control, climate change, healthcare, immigration and racial injustice.
The series’ introductory video was released Wednesday morning, featuring a montage of politically-charged imagery with repeated chants of the campaign slogan “Elect this.”
Among the campaign’s digital video series will be a “Robo-Roundtable” that uses animatronic versions of alligators, parrots and robots to discuss issues. Millennial voters can tweet @electthis with their opinions on hot-button issues, and the tweets will be used to voice the robots.
The campaign will also feature a visual statistics series titled “Infographica” that will use brightly colored charts and graphs to illuminate specific issues. The first video teases issues including gun control, immigration and LGBT regulations, with chyrons claiming that two-thirds of millennial voters support a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigration and that 94 percent support background checks on gun purchases.
Additionally, the Elect This campaign will also feature an online hub where millennial voters can learn more about specific issues and find general election resources. Voters can also join celebrities including Melissa McCarthy and Carmelo Anthony in creating election memes, and play with the “Spend This” tool, which allows voters to see the equivalent costs of the 2016 election in items like Beyoncé tickets and teachers’ salaries.
MTV will also release statistics taken from national polling on the moods and sentiments of millennial voters. Broadcasting & Cable has some of the MTV team’s initial numbers:
- 88% of young people ages 18-34 agree “I’m voting for the candidate who talks about the issues that matter to me.” Nearly 3 in 4 (73%) state “I don’t care about the candidates, I care about the issues.”
- While nearly 7 in 10 Millennials (69%) say “this election is exhausting – I wish it were over” and 60% admit to already experiencing election fatigue, a bigger majority (81%) “feel like my generation can really make an impact on this election.”
- : Nearly 8 in 10 (79%) of young people feel “responsible for helping [their] community.” 85% agreeing “people in my community are more inspiring than politicians.” 73% believe “America is already great and can be even better.”
In another telling statistic, MTV’s polls reportedly found that 92 percent of millennial voters believe this year’s election resembles “a bad reality show.”
MTV partnered with numerous progressive organizations in launching the campaign, including the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, GLAAD, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Rock the Vote, Everytown for Gun Safety, FWD.us, NextGen Climate, Change.org and Define American. Other partners include the Truman National Security Project and the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network (RAINN).
MTV will release new videos in its Elect This series on a weekly basis, with some series like Infographica releasing several times per week.
Follow Daniel Nussbaum on Twitter: @dznussbaum