Comments on: Social Pressure and Voter Turnout: Evidence from a Large-Scale Field Experiment

By: Why did Mike Lee send those emails? | Utah Data Points

Why did Mike Lee send those emails? | Utah Data Points — Wed, 17 Nov 2010 16:58:49 +0000

[...] I can’t say for sure, but I’m guessing that Mike Lee had a staffer who follows the political science literature. In 2008, some political scientists from Yale found that they could boost turnout considerably (by 8.1 percentage points) if they warned folks that everybody on their street would receive a postcard after the election reporting who had voted and who had not. That’s a huge effect, and the postcards were inexpensive to send. (Read more about this study.) [...]

By: Adam The post author

Tue, 10 Mar 2009 16:21:40 +0000

It's been awhile, but a followup on the preceding comments: Looks like there was some attempt in 2008 to use insights from this article for partisan purposes. (Hat tip.)

By: Wednesday Round Up #17 « Neuroanthropology

Wednesday Round Up #17 « Neuroanthropology — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 11:01:05 +0000

[...] Politics, Social Pressure and Voter Turnout: Evidence from a Large-Scale Field Experiment Both internal and external “civic duty” matter, but the external matters more: “shame [...]

By: UCSD grad student Unregistered

Tue, 13 May 2008 18:48:48 +0000

Which, sadly, has much weaker validity than a true experimental design.

By: Adam The post author

Tue, 13 May 2008 18:28:38 +0000

Good question. You’re probably right. I doubt anybody would be able to get approval to run a partisan version of this study, unfortunately. Shoot, I’m surprised that the study in its present form got approval from the ethical review board.

We’ll just have to wait for some politician to try this, I suppose, and see what we can figure out after the fact.

By: UCSD grad student Unregistered

Tue, 13 May 2008 17:25:37 +0000

You write,

…many recipients of treatment #4 called the number listed on the mailer to complain.

This was a non-partisan mailer, right? So what would happen if the mailer were from a partisan group, or from a specific candidate? For example, imagine getting the same mailer, but like this:

Attention voter! We must stop Hillary Clinton from dragging out this nomination contest! Turn out and vote for Obama. We’ll be telling all your neighbors whether you bothered to vote.

In this study, anger over this tactic’s heavyhandedness was directed at the non-partisan group running the study. But in my example, would anger be directed at Obama? Would it cause a rise in turnout, but in Clinton’s favor? I’m inclined to think so.

By: Abstract Politics - Follow Up -- Off Topic: Stop procrastinating and get back to work!

Tue, 13 May 2008 16:36:28 +0000

[...] most recent post reviews “Social Pressure and Voter Turnout: Evidence from a Large-Scale Field Experiment ,” an article from APSR by Gerber, Green, and Larimer. I don’t know how they got this [...]