A Digital Field Experiment Reveals Large Effects of Friend-to-Friend Texting on Voter Turnout
papers.ssrn.com
Two decades of field experiments on get-out-the-vote tactics suggest that impersonal tactics, like mass emails, have only a modest or negligible effect on voter

Using the formulas from corollary 1 of Aronow and Green [2013], we find that untreated compliers have an implied turnout rate of 66.88%, whereas treated compliers have an implied turnout rate of 78.48%. Given the high base rate of voting among compliers in this study, it is interesting that friend-to-friend appeals elevated turnout so profoundly.

The results of this study suggest that simply talking to your friends, even just through a text message, is far more likely to get them to go out and vote than organized but impersonal voter mobilization. If you want to secure the outcome of the election, text or call your friends about it, especially your friends in swing states. Moreover, encourage them to do the same. If a text will increase their voter participation, it’ll probably also get a decent number of them to send a similar text themselves.

Gloom and doom is not going to win the election. Endless panicked articles are not going to win the election. People going out and voting will, and you, person reading this, have the power to get more people to go vote.

It will do more than a century of posting on Lemmy would.

  • Chris Remington@beehaw.orgM
    6·
    4 months ago

    Gloom and doom is not going to win the election. Endless panicked articles are not going to win the election. People going out and voting will, and you, person reading this, have the power to get more people to go vote.

    This is so true and I learned about this about 18 years ago. I haven’t missed a voting cycle since and I try to encourage people to vote as much as I possibly can.