No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Large-Scale Evidence for the Effectiveness of Partisan GOTV Robo Calls
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 August 2022
Abstract
We document the effectiveness of automated (robo) calls for increasing voter participation in contrast to most published research which finds little or no effect from automated calls. We establish this finding in a large field experiment which mimics campaign behavior with a targeted, partisan get-out-the-vote campaign. Our findings show that across all treatments, automated calls led to three additional votes for every thousand subjects called during the 2014 midterm general election. Additionally, our experimental design allows for testing how the number of calls in a treatment, that is dosage, affects voter turnout. Here, results show that three extra calls increase the treatment effect to seven additional votes per thousand subjects called, but that too many additional calls decrease that effect to statistical insignificance in a six-call treatment.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Open Practices
Open data
Open materials
- Copyright
- © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Experimental Research Section of the American Political Science Association
Footnotes
This article has earned badges for transparent research practices: Open Data and Open Materials. For details see the Data Availability Statement.
References
Ali, S. Nageeb and Lin, Charles. 2013. Why People Vote: Ethical Motives and Social Incentives. American Economic Journal: Microeconomics 5(2): 73–98.Google Scholar
Angrist, Joshua D. and Pischke, Jörn-Steffen. 2014. Mastering ‘Metrics: The Path from Cause to Effect. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Arceneaux, Kevin and Nickerson, David W.. 2009. Who Is Mobilized to Vote? A Re-Analysis of 11 Field Experiments. American Journal of Political Science 53(1): 1–16.10.1111/j.1540-5907.2008.00354.xCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barton, Jared, Castillo, Macro, and Petrie, Ragan. 2016. Negative Campaigning, Fundraising, and Voter Turnout: A Field Experiment. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 121, 99–113.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coate, Stephen and Conlin, Michael. 2004. A Group Rule–Utilitarian Approach to Voter Turnout: Theory and Evidence. The American Economic Review 94(5): 1476–504.10.1257/0002828043052231CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Degan, Arianna and Merlo, Antonio. 2011. A Structural Model of Turnout and Voting in Multiple Elections. Journal of the European Economic Association 9(2): 209–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
DellaVigna, Stefano, List, John A., Malmendier, Ulrike, and Rao, Gautam. 2017. Voting to Tell Others. The Review of Economic Studies 84(1): 143–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dhillon, Amrita and Peralta, Susana. 2002. Economic Theories of Voter Turnout. The Economic Journal 112(480): F332–52.10.1111/1468-0297.00049CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Feddersen, Timothy J. and Sandroni, Alvaro. 2006. A Theory of Participation in Elections. The American Economic Review 96(4): 1271–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gerber, Alan S., and Green, Donald P.. 2000. The Effects of Canvassing, Telephone Calls, and Direct Mail on Voter Turnout: A Field Experiment. American Political Science Review 94(03): 653–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gerber, Alan S., Green, Donald P., Kaplan, Edward H., and Kern, Holger L.. 2010. Baseline, Placebo, and Treatment: Efficient Estimation for Three-Group Experiments. Political Analysis 18(3): 297–315.10.1093/pan/mpq008CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gerber, Alan S., Huber, Gregory A., Doherty, David, Dowling, Conor M., Raso, Connor, and Ha, Shang E.. 2011. Personality Traits and Participation in Political Processes. The Journal of Politics 73(3): 692–706.10.1017/S0022381611000399CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Green, Donald P., and Gerber, Alan S.. 2015. Get Out the Vote: How to Increase Voter Turnout (3rd ed.). Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press.Google Scholar
Green, Donald P. and Gerber, Alan S.. 2019. Get Out the Vote: How to Increase Voter Turnout (4th ed.). Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press.Google Scholar
Green, Donald P., McGrath, Mary C., and Aronow, Peter M.. 2013. Field Experiments and the Study of Voter Turnout. Journal of Elections, Public Opinion & Parties 23(1): 27–48.10.1080/17457289.2012.728223CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Green, Donald P. and Zelizer, Adam. 2017. How Much GOTV Mail is Too Much? Results from a Large-Scale Field Experiment. Journal of Experimental Political Science 4(2): 107–18.10.1017/XPS.2017.5CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kling, Daniel T., and Stratmann, Thomas. 2022. Replication Data for Large-Scale Evidence for the Effectiveness of Partisan GOTV Robo Calls. https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/DMJ7EA. Harvard Dataverse, V1.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
List, John A., Shaikh, Azeem M., and Xu, Yang. 2019. Multiple hypothesis testing in experimental economics. Experimental Economics, 22(4), 773–793.10.1007/s10683-018-09597-5CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lofy, Bill. 2005. Politics the Wellstone Way: How to Elect Progressive Candidates and Win on Issues. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Murray, G. R. and Matland, R. E.. 2014. Mobilization Effects Using Mail: Social Pressure, Descriptive Norms, and Timing. Political Research Quarterly 67(2): 304–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nickerson, David W. 2007. Quality is Job One: Professional and Volunteer Voter Mobilization Calls. American Journal of Political Science 51(2): 269–82.10.1111/j.1540-5907.2007.00250.xCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nickerson, David W. 2008. Is Voting Contagious? Evidence from Two Field Experiments. American Political Science Review 102(01): 49–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nickerson, David W. and Rogers, Todd. 2010. Do You Have a Voting Plan? Implementation Intentions, Voter Turnout, and Organic Plan Making. Psychological Science 21(2): 194–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Panagopoulos, Costas. 2011. Timing Is Everything? Primacy and Recency Effects in Voter Mobilization Campaigns. Political Behavior 33(1): 79–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ramirez, Ricardo. 2005. Giving Voice to Latino Voters: A Field Experiment on the Effectiveness of a National Nonpartisan Mobilization Effort. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 601(1): 66–84.10.1177/0002716205278422CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rogers, Todd, Green, Donald P., Ternovski, John, and Young, Carolina Ferrerosa. 2017. Social Pressure and Voting: A Field Experiment Conducted in a High-Salience Election. Electoral Studies 46: 87–100.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Romano, Joseph P. and Wolf, Michael. 2010. Balanced Control of Generalized Error Rates. The Annals of Statistics 38(1): 598–633.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sagarin, Brad J., West, Stephen G., Ratnikov, Alexander, Homan, William K., Ritchie, Timothy D., and Hansen, Edward J.. 2014. Treatment Noncompliance in Randomized Experiments: Statistical Approaches and Design Issues. Psychological Methods 19(3): 317–33.10.1037/met0000013CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Shaw, Daron R., Green, Donald P., Gimpel, James G., and Gerber, Alan S.. 2012. Do Robotic Calls from Credible Sources Influence Voter Turnout or Vote Choice? Evidence from a Randomized Field Experiment. Journal of Political Marketing 11(4): 231–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zelizer, Adam. 2020. How Many Robocalls are too Many? Results from a Large-Scale Field Experiment. Journal of Political Marketing 19(4): 405–13.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kling and Stratmann supplementary material
Appendix
File
144.1 KB