Political Behaviour Part 2: Mobilisation

In part one of this series, we considered the question ‘why do we vote?’ and some of the influences on turnout. In this second part we’ll consider what can be done to actually mobilise voters and what sorts of interventions have been shown to influence turnout behaviour.

One of the most influential and best known studies in this area – with similar results in a UK context - directly compared personal canvassing to direct mail and telephone calls and found that “voter turnout was increased substantially by personal canvassing, slightly by direct mail, and not at all by telephone calls.” The key lesson often drawn from the turnout literature is that the more personal the mode of contact, the more effective when it comes to getting out the vote.

With this in mind, it’s worth pointing out that while direct mail and phone calls may not be the most effective mode for increasing turnout not all direct mail and phone calls are created equal. One of the ways in which direct mail content has been made more personal and more effective when it comes to turnout has been to include personal and neighbour voting records in order to introduce a degree of social pressure as a form of intervention.

This style of communication tends to have a much greater impact on turnout than straightforward, non-personalised encouragement to vote. When it comes to phone calls, more personal, “interactive” and “focussed” calls made by suitably trained staff are markedly more effective than so-called “robo-calls” (one-directional, pre-recorded messages), which have negligible impact. As for TV, there’s little evidence, at least from the US, that differential exposure to TV advertising impacts likelihood to vote or that the impacts of TV advertising last more than a few days at most.

Perhaps the most personal – and effective – kind of intervention for achieving turnout is a specific type of plan referred to as an Implementation Intention. The efficacy of these sorts of plans – that specify when, where and how an intended behaviour will be enacted – have been well established for a number of years. And sure enough, when used in an election context – despite delivery by phone – the formation of a voting plan can substantially increase turnout. While we won’t necessarily receive phone calls helping us develop a voting plan, we are, in some ways, already assisted in turning out. Poll cards helpfully remind us of dates, times and the location of our nearest polling station using text and a map…and, of course they’re easy to put on the fridge or somewhere we’ll notice them. 

So, personalisation may be important to encouraging turn-out in these traditional – face-to-face, direct mail, phone calls – modes of delivery, but what about more contemporary modes?

While there is much less evidence about the efficacy of text messaging in vote mobilization, what evidence there is suggests that texts don’t need to be personal, just “noticeable” to be successful. However, one suspects that tailoring content to make messages more personal in some way might alter mobilisation impact.

Finally, all of this probably depends a lot on what we mean by personal and how the personal manifests. While face to face canvassing may generally be a good way to get out the vote it probably depends a lot on who is doing the talking. The sorts of people who volunteer to take part in electioneering may not be the sorts of people best placed to persuade on behalf of a specific campaign.

• In part three we’ll consider persuasion in a little more detail but this time in terms of the candidate.