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Hillary Clinton Campaign Targets Potential Voters at Pokémon Go Locations

The smartphone game Pokémon Go has become a social phenomenon in America and Australia since its launch on July 6, bringing out tens of millions of aspiring Pokémon trainers to catch Pokemon and battle each other in the streets and public places. Since locations like PokéStops and Pokémon gyms attract crowds, the campaign of American presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has used them as places to register voters in the key battleground state of Ohio. As an added bonus, the game is most popular among millennials — a group with lower voter turnout yet disproportionately inclined towards Clinton's Democratic Party.

Clinton also referred to the game at a rally in Annandale, Virginia on July 14, working it into a pledge to provide more apprenticeships for young entrants in the labor market.

Meanwhile, Clinton's rival on the Republican Party ticket, Donald Trump, used the game to mock her on a Facebook post by presenting her as a Pokemon with a combat power of 1 and a Pokédex referring to her as a "career politician" destined for unemployment. The game is renamed "Crooked Hillary No," in reference to Trump's preferred moniker for Clinton, "Crooked Hillary."

Pokémon Go has an estimated 21 million daily users in the United States, and is the game with most active users in the United States thus far. It is on track to surpass the number of users of Snapchat.

Sources: Vox: Dylan Matthews, Cincinnati.com: Mallorie Sullivan, CNN: David Wright & Sophie Tatum, Pew Research, The Dallas Morning News: Bobby Blanchard