Get out the vote: how to increase voter turnout

2016 ◽  
Vol 53 (07) ◽  
pp. 53-3278-53-3278
Keyword(s):  
Voter Turnout ◽  
Get Out The Vote

scholarly journals Is it worth door-knocking? Evidence from a United Kingdom-based Get Out The Vote (GOTV) field experiment on the effect of party leaflets and canvass visits on voter turnout

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua Townsley
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
Field Experiment ◽  
Voter Turnout ◽  
The United States ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Liberal Democrats ◽  
Percentage Points ◽  
Get Out The Vote

AbstractWhat impact do party leaflets and canvass visits have on voter turnout? Get Out The Vote (GOTV) experiments consistently find that campaigning needs to be personal in order to be effective. However, the imbalance between United States and European-based studies has led to recent calls for further European GOTV experiments. There are also comparatively few partisan experiments. I report the findings of a United Kingdom-based field experiment conducted with the Liberal Democrats in 2017. Results show that party leaflets boost turnout by 4.3 percentage points, while canvassing has a small additional effect (0.6 percentage points). The study also represents the first individual level experiment to compare GOTV effects between postal voters and in-person voters outside the United States.

The Mobile Presidential Election

2015 ◽  
pp. 992-1002 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ramona McNeal ◽  
Lisa Dotterweich Bryan
Keyword(s):  
Voter Turnout ◽  
Presidential Election ◽  
Presidential Elections ◽  
Political Campaigns ◽  
The Internet ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Get Out The Vote

The Internet has been incorporated into political campaigns for a number of purposes including making direct appeals to citizens through the Internet to vote, volunteer their time or donate money. An important question is can the Internet be utilized to increase voter turnout? The Internet has been found to hold the most promise in increasing turnout when it is used to facilitate get-out-the-vote (GOTV) drives. The purpose of this article is to determine what the impact of including smartphones into a GOTV effort may have on voter turnout. To explore this question, voter turnout strategies were examined for the 2008 and 2012 U.S. presidential elections. The findings suggest that when smartphones are used as part of a mobilizing effort, they can help increase voter turnout. Nevertheless the findings also suggest that whether these GOTV drives increase turnout is dependent on which voters are targeted by mobilizing activities.

scholarly journals How Different Are Telephoning and Canvassing? Results from a ‘Get Out the Vote’ Field Experiment in the British 2005 General Election

2008 ◽  
Vol 38 (3) ◽  
pp. 565-574 ◽  
Author(s):  
PETER JOHN ◽  
TESSA BRANNAN
Keyword(s):  
Voter Turnout ◽  
Field Experiments ◽  
Positive Impact ◽  
The United States ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
The Difference ◽  
The One ◽  
The Impact ◽  
E Mail ◽  
Get Out The Vote

Can the positive impact of non-partisan ‘Get Out the Vote’ (GOTV) campaigns be generalized to a variety of institutional and cultural contexts? Gerber, Green and colleagues tested for the effects of these campaigns in a series of pioneering field experiments, which show that a face-to-face contact from a non-partisan source, carried out by a field force calling at the homes of citizens seeking to persuade them to vote, can increase voter turnout. Further experiments find that telephoning has an impact ranging from ineffective to positive, depending on the nature of the call; and there are positive, if weaker, results for other forms of intervention, such as door postings and leafleting; none for e-mail; and weakly positive or null impacts from rote telephoning. Many of these results derive from single cases or from a limited number of research sites; however, the culmination of these findings allows political scientists to be confident of the impact and hierarchy of these interventions. Although GOTV studies of this kind cannot adjudicate authoritatively on theories of mobilization, the difference in impact between the types of intervention, in particular the greater success of personalized messages, implies that it is the personal and face-to-face basis of influence that has an effect, rather than the types of message received and the simple provision of information.So far most of this kind of research has been carried out in the United States, which means that, even with its variety of groups and locations, the range of variation in the institutional frameworks and social conditions is limited to the one-country case.

scholarly journals Is it worth door-knocking? Evidence from a UK-based GOTV field experiment on the effect of leaflets and canvass visits on voter turnout

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua Townsley
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
Field Experiment ◽  
Voter Turnout ◽  
The United States ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Liberal Democrats ◽  
Percentage Points ◽  
Get Out The Vote

What impact do party leaflets and canvass visits have on voter turnout? Get Out The Vote (GOTV) experiments consistently find that campaigning needs to be personal in order to be effective. However, the imbalance between United States and European-based studies has led to recent calls for further European GOTV experiments. There are also comparatively few partisan experiments. I report the findings of a United Kingdom-based field experiment conducted with the Liberal Democrats in 2017. Results show that party leaflets boost turnout by 4.3 percentage points, while canvassing has a small additional effect (0.6 percentage points). The study also represents the first individual level experiment to compare GOTV effects between postal voters and in-person voters outside the United States.

scholarly journals Teaching voters new tricks: The effect of partisan absentee vote-by-mail get-out-the-vote efforts

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 205316801769480 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hans J.G. Hassell
Keyword(s):  
Voter Turnout ◽  
Party Organization ◽  
State Party ◽  
Vote By Mail ◽  
Get Out The Vote

In the last few years policy innovators have implemented a variety of new voting reforms aimed at increasing the ways voters can cast their ballot and with it voter turnout. While these efforts have largely suggested that the net effect of these reforms has been minimal, scholars have not analyzed the effectiveness of the use of these methods by partisan campaigns to increase targeted turnout or to change the methods voters use to cast their ballot. In collaboration with a state party organization, I examine the effect of a partisan get-out-the-vote effort using an absentee vote-by-mail push. I find that these get-out-the-vote efforts to target voters using absentee ballot request forms are effective at shifting more voters to vote absentee. However, while pushing absentee vote-by-mail balloting may bank votes for a campaign before Election Day, the overall effect of partisan campaigns’ use of absentee ballot efforts to increase turnout appears limited.

Voter Turnout and the Dynamics of Electoral Competition in Established Democracies since 1945

2004 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark N. Franklin ◽  
Cees van der Eijk ◽  
Diana Evans ◽  
Michael Fotos ◽  
Wolfgang Hirczy de Mino ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Voter Turnout ◽  
Electoral Competition ◽  
Established Democracies

Local Elections and the Politics of Small-Scale Democracy

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Eric Oliver ◽  
Shang E. Ha ◽  
Zachary Callen
Keyword(s):  
Voter Turnout ◽  
Local Governments ◽  
Voting Behavior ◽  
Local Governance ◽  
Electoral Politics ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Local Elections ◽  
Daily Lives ◽  
Personal Connections ◽  
Community Ties

Local government is the hidden leviathan of American politics: it accounts for nearly a tenth of gross domestic product, it collects nearly as much in taxes as the federal government, and its decisions have an enormous impact on Americans' daily lives. Yet political scientists have few explanations for how people vote in local elections, particularly in the smaller cities, towns, and suburbs where most Americans live. Drawing on a wide variety of data sources and case studies, this book offers the first comprehensive analysis of electoral politics in America's municipalities. Arguing that current explanations of voting behavior are ill suited for most local contests, the book puts forward a new theory that highlights the crucial differences between local, state, and national democracies. Being small in size, limited in power, and largely unbiased in distributing their resources, local governments are “managerial democracies” with a distinct style of electoral politics. Instead of hinging on the partisanship, ideology, and group appeals that define national and state elections, local elections are based on the custodial performance of civic-oriented leaders and on their personal connections to voters with similarly deep community ties. Explaining not only the dynamics of local elections, Oliver's findings also upend many long-held assumptions about community power and local governance, including the importance of voter turnout and the possibilities for grassroots political change.

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