Mobilizing different types of voters: The influence of campaign intensity on turnout in direct democratic votes

A well-established body of literature links voter turnout to political campaigns. In this view, intensive campaigns increase the perceived salience of a decision, fostering information-seeking and, ultimately, turnout. The existing literature has also advanced our understanding of how direct democratic institutions influence turnout in elections. Yet we still know little about whether and to what extent campaign efforts influence voter turnout in direct democratic votes, and we know even less about who is mobilized. We claim that campaign intensity has differentiated effects across voters, depending on voters’ participation profile. To test this claim we use a rich dataset of official turnout data covering more than 40 direct democratic votes in Switzerland. The results support our claim. While intensive political campaigns overall foster citizens to turn out to vote, they do so especially for “selective” (or “intermittent”) voters, who need to decide anew at each ballot whether to turn out or not. Interestingly, we also find that frequent abstainers are not immune from campaign effects, and get almost as strongly mobilized as selective voters in highly intensive campaigns.     

Information,perceptions, and electoral behaviour of young voters: A randomised controlled experiment

The way people absorb and process politically relevant information is central to their subsequent political behaviour (in terms of turnout and vote choice). Nonetheless, little is known about how young voters – who might be more impressionable than more experienced voters – respond to the provision of such information. In this article, we design a between-subject randomised controlled trial that exposes a sample of university students to positive, neutral or negative information about central government performance before the 2017 Portuguese local elections. We find that young voters update their perceptions more when exposed to negative news. This negativity bias is stronger for first-time voters. We also find that negative information significantly affects turnout of initially undecided young voters. Our results imply that sensitivity to information is heterogeneous and that some young voters may be prone to manipulation through the provision of negative news.     

Mobilizing the Seldom Voter: Campaign Contact and Effects in High-Profile Elections

Decades of research suggests that campaign contact together with an advantageous socioeconomic profile increases the likelihood of casting a ballot. Measurement and modeling handicaps permit a lingering uncertainty about campaign communication as a source of political mobilization however. Using data from a uniquely detailed telephone survey conducted in a pair of highly competitive 2002 U.S. Senate races, we further investigate who gets contacted, in what form, and with what effect. We conclude that even in high-profile, high-dollar races the most important determinant of voter turnout is vote history, but that holding this variable constant reveals a positive effect for campaign communication among “seldom” voters, registered but rarely active participants who—ironically—are less likely than regular or intermittent voters to receive such communication.

Strategic campaigning, closeness, and voter mobilization in U.S. Presidential elections

The scholarly literature on voter mobilization is ambivalent regarding the effects of closeness on turnout. Economic analyses of turnout (i.e. the classic calculus of voting) contend that as elections become closer, voters perceive their participation as more valuable because there is a greater chance that they will cast the deciding vote. Other work argues that voters do not take closeness into account because the probability that their vote uniquely changes the outcome of an election is quite small even in close elections. Still, this second perspective maintains that closeness may increase turnout because elites distribute campaign resources to places where election results could be affected by mobilizing additional supporters. While the latter perspective is theoretically well-developed, empirical support for the notion that elite activity (rather than citizen perceptions) connects closeness and turnout is limited. Using improved measures of closeness and campaign activities, we test for citizen perception and elite mobilization effects on turnout in the context of U.S. Presidential elections. Results show that while closeness has no direct effect on turnout, elites indeed target campaign activities on close states and the asymmetric distribution of resources across states results in higher turnout in battleground states.     

Macro Research on Campaign Mobilization in the United States

ABSTRACT

This essay reviews the macro or aggregate-level academic literature on campaign mobilization and voter turnout in the United States. The conclusion that emerges from this literature is that hard-fought, high-stimulus electoral contests get out the vote. In part, the level of turnout on election day is a product of the efforts of strategic political actors (e.g., candidates, campaign contributors, and political parties) in the pursuit of elective office. The essay suggests that the academic literature on campaign mobilization would benefit from greater appreciation of how real world campaigns operate. A lesson that academics should draw from the practitioners is that strategic campaigns target and attempt to get out their voters. Careful consideration of the flows of information in campaigns would lead to a richer theory of mobilization. Looking at campaigns in a differentiated fashion, future research should recognize some fundamental points about their turnout implications: what campaigns do and whom they target may be more important than simply how much they do.     

Radio Public Service Announcements and Voter Participation Among Native Americans: Evidence from Two Field Experiments

Although similar to other U.S. minorities in terms of socio-economic status and political interest, Native Americans are more dispersed geographically and much less likely to vote. This pattern suggests that at least part of the disparity in turnout might be due to Native Americans’ lower exposure to statewide and national mobilization campaigns. To test this idea, a randomized experiment was conducted in order to evaluate the effectiveness of a radio campaign that encouraged Native Americans to vote. In 2008 and 2010, experiments were conducted across a total of 85 radio markets spanning more than a dozen states. Results suggest that this nonpartisan radio campaign increased turnout among registered Native American voters in both elections, although the estimated effects fall short of conventional levels of statistical significance.     

Who Is Mobilized to Vote? A Re‐Analysis of 11 Field Experiments

Many political observers view get-out-the-vote (GOTV) mobilization drives as a way to increase turnout among chronic nonvoters. However, such a strategy assumes that GOTV efforts are effective at increasing turnout in this population, and the extant research offers contradictory evidence regarding the empirical validity of this assumption. We propose a model where only those citizens whose propensity to vote is near the indifference threshold are mobilized to vote and the threshold is determined by the general interest in the election. Our three-parameter model reconciles prior inconsistent empirical results and argues that low-propensity voters can be effectively mobilized only in high-turnout elections. The model is tested on 11 randomized face-to-face voter mobilization field experiments in which we specifically analyze whether subjects' baseline propensity to vote conditions the effectiveness of door-to-door GOTV canvassing. The evidence is consistent with the model and suggests that face-to-face mobilization is better at stimulating turnout among low-propensity voters in prominent elections than it is in quiescent ones .     

The Moderating Effect of Debates on Political Attitudes

In theory, candidate debates can influence voters by providing information about candidates' quality and policy positions. However, there is limited evidence about whether and why debates influence voters in new democracies. We use a field experiment on parliamentary debates during Ghana's 2016 elections to show that debates improve voters' evaluations of candidates. Debates have the strongest effect on partisan voters, who become more favorable toward and more likely to vote for opponent-party candidates and less likely to vote for co-partisans. Experimental and unique observational data capturing participants' second-by-second reactions to the debates show that policy information was the most important causal mechanism driving partisan moderation, especially among strong partisans. A follow-up survey shows that these effects persist in electorally competitive communities, whereas they dissipate in party strongholds. Policy-centered debates have the potential to reduce partisan polarization in new democracies, but the local political context conditions the persistence of these effects.     

A Comparative Analysis of Political Communication Systems and Voter Turnout

This article explores how political communication institutions affect cross-national differences in voter turnout in democratic elections. It demonstrates how the structure and means of conveying political messages—gauged by media systems, access to paid political television advertising, and campaign finance laws—explain variations in turnout across 74 countries. Relying on a "mobilization" perspective, I argue that institutional settings that reduce information costs for voters will increase turnout. The major empirical findings are twofold. First, campaign finance systems that allow more money (and electioneering communication) to enter election campaigns are associated with higher levels of voter turnout. Second, broadcasting systems and access to paid political television advertising explain cross-national variation in turnout, but their effects are more complex than initially expected. While public broadcasting clearly promotes higher levels of turnout, it also modifies the effect of paid advertising access on turnout.     

Unresponsive and Unpersuaded: The Unintended Consequences of a Voter Persuasion Effort

To date, field experiments on campaign tactics have focused overwhelmingly on mobilization and voter turnout, with far more limited attention to persuasion and vote choice. In this paper, we analyze a field experiment with 56,000 Wisconsin voters designed to measure the persuasive effects of canvassing, phone calls, and mailings during the 2008 presidential election. Focusing on the canvassing treatment, we find that persuasive appeals had two unintended consequences. First, they reduced responsiveness to a follow-up survey among infrequent voters, a substantively meaningful behavioral response that has the potential to induce bias in estimates of persuasion effects as well. Second, the persuasive appeals possibly reduced candidate support and almost certainly did not increase it. This counterintuitive finding is reinforced by multiple statistical methods and suggests that contact by a political campaign may engender a backlash.     

Neighborhood heterogeneity and electoral turnout

We perform an empirical analysis to investigate how neighborhood heterogeneity affects electoral turnout. To this end, we rely on a unique dataset on local elections in an Italian municipality, which merges information on socio-economic characteristics of about 370.000 individuals with turnout data for 434 electoral precincts in 2004 and 2009. Exploiting both across and within precincts variation, we are able to disentangle the contextual effects on precinct-level electoral turnout of two different dimensions of neighborhood heterogeneity: income inequality and ethnic composition. Our results support the idea that contextual heterogeneity negatively affects political participation.     

The dynamics of candidate evaluations and vote choice in 2008: looking to the past or future?

In this paper, we leverage a 10-wave election panel to examine the relative and dynamic effects of voter evaluations of Bush, Palin, Biden, McCain, and Obama in the 2008 presidential election. We show that the effects of these political figures on vote choice evolves through the campaign, with the predictive effects of President Bush declining after the nominees are known, and the effects of the candidates (and Palin), increasing towards Election Day. In evaluating the relative effects of these political figures on individual-level changes in vote choice during the fall campaign, we also find that evaluations of the candidates and Sarah Palin dwarf that of President Bush. Our results suggest a Bayesian model of voter decision making in which retrospective evaluations of the previous administration might provide a starting point for assessing the candidates, but prospective evaluations based on information learned during the campaign helps voters to update their candidate preference. Finally, we estimate the “Palin effect,” based on individual-level changes in favorability towards the vice-presidential nominee, and conclude that her campaign performance cost McCain just under 2% of the final vote share.     

Voter Decision Making in Election 2000: Campaign Effects, Partisan Activation, and the Clinton Legacy

How do citizens respond to campaign events? We explore this question with a unique repeated measures survey design, fielded during the 2000 presidential campaign. We model transitions in support for the major party candidates following the party conventions and presidential debates. In the aggregate, Gore support increases following the conventions (but not the debates), while Bush support increases with the debates (but not the conventions). But there is considerable microlevel variation in the data: responsiveness to campaign events is greatest among Independents, undecided voters, and “mismatched partisans,” but exactly how these groups respond differs for each event. Moreover, attitudes toward then President Clinton mediate the effect of the campaign events on voter preferences. Two primary conclusions follow: (1) rich data sets are required to observe the effects of campaign events; (2) the influence of campaign events on vote choice is conditional on previous preferences, partisan dispositions, and political context.     

Representativeness and Motivations of the Contemporary Donorate: Results from Merged Survey and Administrative Records

Only a small portion of Americans make campaign donations, yet because ambitious politicians need these resources, this group may be particularly important for shaping political outcomes. We investigate the characteristics and motivations of the donorate using a novel dataset that combines administrative records of two types of political participation, contributing and voting, with a rich set of survey variables. These merged observations allow us to examine differences in demographics, validated voting, and ideology across subgroups of the population and to evaluate the motivations of those who donate. We find that in both parties donors are consistently and notably divergent from non-donors to a larger degree than voters are divergent from non-voters. Of great interest, in both parties donors are more ideologically extreme than other partisans, including primary voters. With respect to why individuals contribute, we show that donors appear responsive to their perception of the stakes in the election. We also present evidence that inferences about donor ideology derived from the candidates donors give to may not closely reflect the within-party policy ideology of those donors. Overall, our results suggest that donations are a way for citizens motivated by the perceived stakes of elections to increase their participation beyond solely turning out.     

Open versus closed primaries and the ideological composition of presidential primary electorates

Many journalists, political reformers and social scientists assume that electorates in open versus closed primaries are distinctive, especially in terms of their ideological orientations. Because voting in closed primaries is restricted to registered partisans, voters in this setting are assumed to be more ideologically extreme. Independents voting in open primaries are seen as moderating the ideological orientation of these primary electorates. However, our research demonstrates that the ideological orientations of voters in these two primary settings are quite similar. Prior research demonstrates the influence of primary laws on voters’ self-identifications as partisans or independents. We expand upon this research to show how this influences the number and ideological positions of partisans and independents as they vote in presidential primaries held under differing participation rules.     

One voter, two first-order elections?

Conventional wisdom has it that elections other than national ones are “second-order elections,” driven by political conditions in the “first-order” national arena. It has not yet been shown that a sub- or supra-national election can exhibit qualities similar to those of first-order elections. This paper uses the 2003 Ontario Election Study, from a provincial election in extremely decentralized federation, to demonstrate that a sub-national election can be a first-order election. Aggregate evidence shows voters' interest and turnout is comparable to national elections. Individual-level evidence shows vote choice is determined by arena-specific factors. And dynamic evidence shows that this sub-national campaign had its own homegrown events that influenced voters, just as campaign events influence national elections.     

Increasingly unequal turnout in Eastern European new democracies: Communist and transitional legacies versus new institutions

Unequal turnout, namely that educated citizens are more likely to vote, has been a long-standing pre-occupation of scholars of political participation and has been shown to exist across established democracies in varying degrees. Using pooled cross-sectional individual level data covering the period from 1990 to 2007 across 12 post-communist new democracies, this paper examines the applicability of existing explanations for unequal turnout in the Eastern European context. The paper shows that while voting procedures explain some cross-national variation in unequal turnout, turnout inequality is likewise shaped over time by processes related to the transition from communism, primarily the fading of initial excitement with democratic elections. The mechanism of learning among mature voters rather than generational replacement dominates the latter process.