Floridians Hammered With GOP Robocalls: Report

FLORIDA — Political robocalls are on the rise across the country, and data shows they are disproportionally affecting one group of voters.

Calls originating from Donald Trump's campaign reach between 500,000 and a million voters each week in Florida, vastly outnumbering Democrats, who reach only 5 percent as many voters, ABC Action News in Tampa Bay reports.

The report cites data from YouMail, a call-blocking app that has collected samples of political robocalls and shared them online.

"Joe Biden is nothing more than an empty vessel for Bernie Sanders' and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's radical policies," one states.

The rise in calls, however, is not necessarily a new phenomenon. Data from YouMail shows overall robocalls in Florida rose month-over-month from 260 million in May to over 330 million in September.

Further, 60 percent of all unwanted calls in the U.S. are made up of scams or telemarketing operations.

The furthest-reaching scam is car warranty robocalls. Following that was medical scams and government scams from callers pretending to be the Internal Revenue Service and Social Security Administration.

In September, an average of 11 million robocalls calls were placed each day, with each Floridian receiving an average of 17.3 calls in the month.

Political communications expert and associate University of South Florida professor Josh Scacco told ABC Action News the increase in calls is the result of something called a "flood zone strategy."

"This is trying to reach, particularly the base of voters who a party needs to come out and support a candidate and making sure they don’t forget where to vote and when to vote," Sacco said.

Luckily, recipients of unwanted calls can take action to reduce the number of callers or stop them altogether.

The Federal Communications Commission recommends using robocall-blocking technology and adding phone numbers to the federal Do Not Call List, which prohibits legitimate telemarketers from contacting users.

“Robocalls continue to grow more slowly than we expected as the world reopens,” YouMail CEO Alex Quilici said in a statement. “The issue is that if the rate of calls per day keeps growing at 5% to 10% per month, robocalls will become a more and more noticeable problem throughout the rest of the year.”