Who is Mobilized to Vote? A Re-Analysis of 11 Field Experiments
Recent randomized experiments have shown that door-to-door mobilization efforts can have massive payoffs, boosting turnout by 7 to 10 percentage points among those targeted. But although previous...
View ArticleDoes Voting History Matter? Analysing Persistence in Turnout
Denny and Doyle have a straightforward point in this article: Yes, voting is habit-forming, but to a lesser extent than reported previously. In a widely discussed article, Gerber, Green, and Shachar...
View ArticlePersonality and Civic Engagement: An Integrative Framework for the Study of...
Political scientists pay very little attention to personality when they study political behavior. Instead, they prefer to look at environmental variables (campaign spending, personal income, personal...
View ArticleIntroduction to Social Pressure and Voting: New Experimental Evidence
Two years ago, Gerber, Green, and Larimer (2008) shook up research on turnout with a stunning experimental result: You can raise turnout dramatically with a postcard. Not just any postcard, of course....
View ArticlePublic Accountability and Political Participation: Effects of Face-to-Face...
Here’s a few things we know about voter turnout: The urban poor don’t vote. Voter turnout experiments don’t typically focus on non-voting populations like the urban poor. Turnout is lower in municipal...
View ArticleAffect, Social Pressure and Prosocial Motivation: Field Experimental Evidence...
Suppose a local newspaper planned to honor those who vote by listing their names in a post-election issue. Would you be more likely to vote? Now, suppose a local newspaper planned to shame those who...
View ArticleIs There Backlash to Social Pressure? A Large-scale Field Experiment on Voter...
In 2008, Gerber et al. published a pioneering study of mobilization. Using heavy-handed tactics, they found that they could shame people into voting (read more). Using heavy-handed tactics might be...
View ArticleAn Experiment Testing the Relative Effectiveness of Encouraging Voter...
We already know from Gerber et al. (2008) that social pressure can boost voter turnout. As part of Political Behavior‘s special issue on social pressure and turnout (read some background), Gerber et...
View ArticleTiming is Everything? Primacy and Recency Effects in Voter Mobilization...
In recent years, political scientists have run a variety of field experiments to show exactly which methods of voter mobilization are most effective. However, those experiments have focused mostly on...
View ArticleMotivating Voter Turnout by Invoking the Self
I find voter mobilization experiments fascinating. That’s why I write about them a lot (e.g. here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and...
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