Darren Samuelsohn is a senior policy reporter for Politico.

WASHINGTON, Iowa – Travis Stanger landed on Bernie Sanders’ radar last summer when, at age 17, he started donating $3 a month from his part-time job as a McDonalds’ cashier. The campaign wanted to be sure he stayed motivated, so in January a mailer arrived at his eastern Iowa home offering a free keychain if he replied with a text message. He thumbed in “BERN” and got the keychain, and the Sanders campaign got his phone number.

Josh Ingham, a 17-year-old senior at a suburban Des Moines high school, sees Bernie ads pop up on his cellphone when he tries to watch a music or news video on YouTube. The latest batch are short, punchy and young – they feel almost like Vines, jump-cut and lightly satirical. One features a mooing cow and ends by imploring students like him not just to vote Bernie at Monday night’s caucuses, but “take the folks with you.”


Hillary Clinton’s war chest might have millions more dollars, and Ted Cruz might be blasting Donald Trump with television ads, but if you’re a teenager in Iowa, it’s Bernie Sanders who is likely winning the war for your iPhone. The oldest candidate in the presidential campaign is the one most aggressively courting the youngest end of the voter pool, and the strategy is built around the one device kids spend the most time with: their phones.

“We’re not shooting in the dark here,” said Tad Devine, a senior adviser to the Sanders campaign. “We’ve got really good ideas of who we should be going after.”

A campaign strategy targeting teenagers as young as 17 might sound like a waste of valuable time and money. But in Iowa there are 52,000 high school seniors who will be 18 by Election Day, and the rules of caucus voting allow anyone eligible to vote in November to participate this Monday. Confident that this slice of the electorate is overwhelmingly Bernie territory, the Sanders campaign has gone after them aggressively -- his website is the only one among his Democratic rivals that makes explicit multiple reminders about this quirk in the age rules.

To find and reach out to kids who might really show up to caucus, Sanders has built a sophisticated team, in part fueled by some of the data and digital talent that helped propel the social-media savvy Barack Obama 2008 campaign. Its consultants include data analytics guru Ken Strasma and digital strategist Scott Goodstein, both Obama campaign vets, and behind the scenes has a small army of smart digital hands blasting away on social media and helping to build up a large database of young supporters. The tech team also works with celebrities like Seth MacFarlane, Sarah Silverman and Killer Mike to coordinate and promote pro-Bernie tweets and Instagram posts that echo across the Internet, picking up thousands of additional views by young people.

They’re taking advantage of the thinly sliced market segments offered by digital powerhouses like YouTube, Snapchat and Facebook, which sell the ability to send ads very specifically to the phones of, say, Iowans in their late teens. Over on Pandora, youth-oriented Bernie commercials can be made to interrupt only pop music shuffles for the kinds of songs their parents would never be able to identify, from heavy metal rock bands like Five Finger Death Punch to hip hoppers Twenty One Pilots and electropop star Halsey.

Then there’s the free stuff. Sanders is giving away T-shirts and key chains to 17-year-olds who agree to be part of his social media network, exchange text messages with his campaign and start pro-Bernie chapters in their high schools. More than 1,000 “FEEL THE BERN” keychains have already been shipped out, his campaign said. In return, the Sanders campaign gets some pretty valuable pieces of data from its supporters that it might not otherwise have because they’re minors, including names, addresses, cell phone numbers and where exactly they are eligible to caucus.

Once the campaign finds the right kids, the message might arrive as inspiration, humor, or even a challenge. “The political establishment does not believe you care enough to caucus,” reads one direct mailer that showed up at Travis Stanger’s house. “Prove them wrong.”

The Sanders campaign gives away free keychains to 17-year-olds who engage with the campaign via social media or text message.

Iowa’s teenagers are the first of this 2016 presidential election cycle to get so many hyper-focused digital messages, but they won’t be the last. At least 21 states and Washington D.C. allow some form of 17-year-old voting in primaries and caucuses so long as they hit their 18th birthday by the general election. That means that beyond Iowa, teens in many of the other early voting states like South Carolina, Nevada, Virginia, Nebraska, Kentucky, Ohio, Illinois and North Carolina had better brace for an onslaught of text messages, online ads and other digital solicitations designed partly to motivate them, and partly to scoop up their data.

"I imagine all the campaigns are researching the sources of lists of 17-year-olds," Strasma said.

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Sanders’ data-driven charm offensive is pulling a page from an Iowa playbook that's been used with some measure of success in a presidential campaign before. Obama in 2008 rode a wave of support from new young voters in Iowa, propelling him all the way through the general election and into the White House.

“Because these are votes campaigns are not counting on showing up, even a small turnout increment can make a big difference,” explained Strasma, the microtargeting consultant who helped lead Obama’s 2008 efforts, and before that worked on John Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign.

Sanders' mobile push is part of a larger get-out-the-vote strategy targeting teens that includes the senator himself visiting with seniors as he stops at their schools, and an effort to recruit at least one volunteer at every Iowa high school to serve as the campaign’s point of contact and help build a larger network of classmates.

“If there’s a high school, we’ve probably made the connection to at least get to the senior class one way or the other,” said Pete D’Alessandro, Sander’s Iowa state director. “You use all the new technology you can.”

In Iowa, Sanders’ high school caucus strategy is partly an attempt to exploit the unique rules underpinning the Democratic process, where the number of caucuses you win matters more than the raw vote totals. A huge turnout of excited college students might actually hurt Sanders, by concentrating his votes in a handful of college towns. But high-schoolers are more widely distributed, and in some tight races could be a secret weapon against Hillary Clinton and Martin O'Malley.

Hans Riemer, the head of Obama’s 2008 national youth vote program, said that high school students are in some ways more critical as a turnout opportunity than the college crowd. “It doesn’t have to be in the thousands,” he said. “If you can bring even one student to every one of those caucuses that would be a big deal. A lot of those caucuses, the margin of victory might be two or three.”

When it comes to the young digerati, the closest competition for the Sanders campaign might be coming from Rand Paul. His chief digital strategist, Vincent Harris, said he's spending about half his time in the lead up to the Iowa caucuses trying to drum up support from the youth vote, defined by the Kentucky senator as both high school seniors and college students. He's been buying up digital ads aimed specifically at teenagers through their Facebook and Instagram accounts, emphasizing the pieces of Paul’s libertarian message that connect with younger voters, including protecting civil liberties and safeguarding Internet privacy.

Paul’s top youth outreach staffer, Cliff Maloney, said he has visited more than 100 high school classes in Iowa to explain the caucus process and make a direct pitch to the students to support his boss. “They love talking about the filibuster,” he said, explaining that his presentation usually includes a short video message from the senator, followed by a Q&A session. It ends with an iPad or pen and paper getting passed around to the class to collect email addresses and phone numbers – critical information that can then be used to send tailor-made Paul campaign ads to their mobile devices.

"Think about it. There are thousands and thousands of 17-year-olds in this state that will be 18 by the day of the general election," said David Fischer, Paul's campaign co-chair in Iowa. "There's all this excitement statewide surrounding this on both sides of the aisle...And we've got the guy those young folks happen to like."

Iowa’s high schools for the last year have been a convenient backdrop for dozens of presidential campaign events. Donald Trump, who bested all other Republicans in a statewide straw poll last Tuesday of Iowa students from kindergarten to 12th grade, accepted an invitation last fall from an AP government class at a suburban Des Moines high school, speaking to them right before their homecoming dance and sharing a message that they should “stay away from the alcohol and stay away from the drugs.”

A Sanders mailer targeting high school seniors.

Several other campaigns have tried to take their message directly to Iowa's high school seniors – with varying degrees of success. Invited last year by Secretary of State Paul Pate to make a short video explaining why they deserved the youth vote, Mike Huckabee pleaded with students to consider what can happen if they don't participate in electing the leaders they want. “Heck, the politicians could raise the age in which you could buy alcohol to 35. My guess is that’s not going to be exactly what you want," the former Arkansas governor said.

Hillary Clinton visited Keota High School just before Christmas after a small group of students at the southeastern Iowa school waged a months-long Twitter campaign to get the Democrat’s attention. On the ground in Iowa, Clinton's campaign has been trying to get the high school crowd engaged by looking out for supportive teachers and recruiting young student volunteers.

On social media, her teen-focused efforts have had its share of ups and downs. Clinton generated some positive buzz when she handed over her Instagram account to "Girls" creator Lena Dunham, and she netted 30,000 likes for a picture she took with comedian Amy Poehler and the cast of the Comedy Central show 'Broad City." But Clinton notched a resounding internet fail when she encouraged Twitter users to size up their college student debt experiences "in three emojis or less,” and got hammered for taking a condescending approach to a serious issue. “This is like when your mom tries to be hip in front of your friends and totally fails at it,” one person in Florida wrote of the Clinton effort.

Others have tried to make their case in person. The Ben Carson and O’Malley campaigns sent representatives to hand out stickers and answer questions earlier this month in Cedar Rapids before a local high school held its own mock caucus with about 1,100 students from the 10th to the 12th grades. “They listen,” said Iowa state Rep. Walt Rogers, who is serving as Rick Santorum's state director and has been into several Iowa high schools to talk on behalf of the former Pennsylvania senator and winner of the 2012 Iowa GOP caucus. “How much they understand is a question.”

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Does it bother parents that campaigns are trying so hard to reach their kids? Some of the more aggressive social media efforts – Buzzfeed on Friday reported about the online troll army that appears to have coalesced around the Sanders campaign, dubbing them the “Bernie Bros” – have prompted complaints of harassment. But of more than two dozen Iowa parents, teachers, school administrators and campaign officials interviewed by POLITICO, none expressed alarm at the avalanche of information the state's teenagers are getting during the presidential campaign. Many see this as a teachable moment.

“I think our teenagers need to get as involved as they can" Paul Williamson, the principal of Abraham Lincoln High School, said in an interview just minutes before Bill and Chelsea Clinton took the stage at a gym in his Des Moines-area school for a recent campaign rally.

“They’re getting calls almost nightly if they’re planning to go to the caucuses,” said Schuyler Snakenberg, a social studies teacher at Keota High School who helped his students line up visits by Clinton, Santorum and O'Malley. “They’re just more aware of what’s going on. I just think they’re assuming this is what’s normal for a political cycle.”

On a Thursday night in mid-January, Snakenberg brought together a half dozen of his students at a Pizza Ranch in the neighboring town of Washington, Iowa, to talk with a POLITICO reporter about their experiences interacting with the different presidential campaigns -- and to watch a GOP debate.

Caroline Reeves, a 15-year-old sophomore who says she would caucus for Sanders if she were old enough, showed off a stream of text messages that have clogged her phone over the last few weeks. The most recent one came an hour earlier, urging her to tune in for the GOP debate “& donate $20 to Bernie every time they upset you.”

Kylea Tinnes, a junior, said her Pandora stations had been “loaded” with Sanders ads. She described herself as an independent and hadn’t made up her mind – not that it matters, since at age 16 she's also not old enough to caucus. But she knows she’s no fan of Trump and wonders why the billionaire's campaign kept sending her email messages. Over on Instagram, she reported seeing “a lot of hate” about Trump, including a picture of a bumper sticker with the words “Donald Trump Ballot Box” on it. It was affixed to a dumpster.

“I shared it,” she said.

The students know a good deal about politics for their age. But they also concede they struggle to make sense of the conflicting information they see and hear from the candidates and their campaigns, of the punches and counterpunches they watch in the debates, and in the information that comes toward them on their phones and other electronic devices.

“I get lost," said Megan Adam, a 17-year old from Keota who in January graduated early from her high school. Adam, who considers herself conservative and plans to caucus for Rubio, says she gets a dozen or more email messages a day from his campaign and the other Republicans. "Sometimes I just kind of lose faith in everything everyone says.”