While I was studying political science in college, my adviser, Alan Gerber, published a paper recounting a novel voter-turnout technique involving “social pressure” that, as he and his co-authors discovered, turned out to be one of the most cost-effective methods ever devised for increasing voter turnout. (Read the whole paper.) When I read on the Volokh Conspiracy today about a similar tactic being used in the Wisconsin governor’s race, I was not surprised to see that the mailers being used look nearly identical — right down to their wording and formatting — to the postcards sent by Gerber and his co-authors.
In their study, Gerber, Donald Green, and Christopher Larimer launched a large-scale randomized field experiment that consisted of sending postcards to roughly 80,000 Michigan households a week and a half before a primary election. Each household was randomly assigned to receive one of four types of postcards:
- The first of these postcards said, “DO YOUR CIVIC DUTY–VOTE!”
- The second included that line with the addition: “YOU ARE BEING STUDIED!”, and stated that researchers would review whether they voted by examining public records.
- The third type of postcard included the civic-duty line, plus the statement: “WHO VOTES IS PUBLIC INFORMATION!”, accompanied by the names of the registered voters in the household to which the postcard was addressed and whether they voted in each of the previous two elections — with a blank line for the upcoming election. The postcard added that an updated chart would be sent after the election.
- The fourth postcard was the same as the third, but also included the names and voting history of other people who lived nearby.
The control group’s turnout rate was 29.7%. People who received the first, “civic duty” postcard turned out at a rate of 31.5%. The second postcard, which had suggested that the recipients were being studied by researchers, voted at a rate of 32.2%. For people who received the third postcard, which indicated whether they had voted in the past, turnout climbed to 34.5% — nearly a 5-percentage-point bump over the control group. And for those who received the fourth postcard, which listed their neighbors’ voting habits as well, turnout rose to 37.8% — an astonishing 8.1-percentage-point increase in turnout.
To put this in perspective: typical door-to-door turnout operations cost about $20 per extra vote, and phone banks usually cost about $35 per vote. These postcards, however, cost only about 30 cents to print and mail; accordingly, the fourth type of postcard was able to generate votes at only $1.93 per vote!
Of course, such tactics might be good at generating votes, but they also generate blowback because many voters don’t like the idea that their voting habits are being monitored and publicly announced. But if the mailers are sent by a third party, a candidate might plausibly be able to deny involvement, and there’s no doubt that such mailers are incredibly effective.