Hello. My name is Todd Rogers.
I'm a professor of Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School.
Today, we're going to be talking about a specific domain, voter mobilization, and
how behavioral science can be applied to a specific problem, mobilizing voters,
and the kind of progress that's possible after years of focus on it.
I started as a political poster and I realized there was a science behavior
change that we weren't really using in politics.
So, I went to grad school, learned about this, and then I went back to Washington
and started a research institute with others, co-founded it, where we
translated the insights of Behavioral Science into political strategy.
We focused on things like donation, volunteerism resource allocation, and
voter mobilization. Today, we're going to be talking of just
that one outcome. How do we maximize the impact of money
spent on mobilizing voters? We're going to see the kind of progress
that's possible as this field of Behavioral Science has been applied to
this one problem. So, to begin, here's a picture of me 10
years ago. I was volunteering for a campaign, I had
a lot more hair, and I was making a phone call that was completely consistent with
the norms of about a decade ago. I would begin the script by saying,
hello, Mrs.Smith. It's easy to vote.
The issues at stake are important, it's going to be close.
So, your vote matters, and it's your civic responsibility to vote.
Do you intend to vote? Now, of course, she says, like everybody,
95% of people say this, yes, I intend to vote.
So, I say, great, thanks. Have a nice night.
So, that's the standard. That's the, the industry standard, the
most common kind of message that was used up to about a decade ago.
And if you unpack it, you can see that what we're really emphasizing are very
rational variables. Things like, it's easy to vote,
suggesting that the cost is low. It's important, the race is important, so
if you have an impact, it's going to be high because the consequences are high.
The, it's a close election, meaning you could be the pivotal voter, and it's your
civic duty to vote. Now if you unpack this, each of these is
part of the rational voter model. What's fascinating is, up until about
2004, this was the most sophisticated kind of of voter mobilization message.
And experimentalists like Don Green and Alan Gerber at Yale randomized controlled
experiments in the field testing different elements of these to get out
the vote scripts. They learned that emphasizing that it's
easy has no impact of a voter mobilization message.
Emphasizing that it's an important election, similarly, no effect.
Emphasizing that you could be the pivotal voter, that it's a close election, no
effect. Emphasizing that it's your civic duty, no
effect. So, what they concluded in this
meta-analysis of many of these studies is that the content of what you say doesn't
matter, so much as the mode of contact. And what they found at the time was that
the more personal, the more effective. Canvasing door-to-door is more effective
than impersonal robocall and things like that.
So, this was the, the work of behavioral scientists and psychologists like myself
and, in fact, Alan Gerber and Don Green also moved into this direction where we
start testing psychological elements, behavioral elements, that could be
included into the, these scripts. We'll start with the project that I
conducted with a collaborator named David Nickerson at Notre Dame.
So, what we have is the state of Pennsylvania in the 2008 primary
election. So, this is[UNKNOWN] Presidential
election, Barack Obama versus Hillary Clinton, the presidential primary for the
democratic party has not been resolved yet with a bunch of potential voters,
about 300,000 of them. What we do is we randomly assign them to
one of four different conditions. The first condition gets no contact at
all. No phone call.
They're the untreated control group. The second condition gets a standard
voter mobilization script. It's important, please vote.
You could be a pivotal voter. The next group gets the standard, plus do
you intend to vote. Just eliciting a commitment or an
intention. And now, the fourth gets the standard,
plus the intention, plus a battery of questions designed to elicit a concrete
plan. Do you intend to vote?
Yes. What time will you vote?
How will you get there? Where will you be coming from?
This is a very concrete set of questions. Now, this is inspired by research in
Cognitive Psychology, on implementation intentions.
People like Peter Gollwitzer at NYU and others have worked on this for decades,
and they found that as you unpack the concrete details of an act, it makes you
more likely to follow through on it for two reasons.
One, you're more likely to schedule it, it's pure mechanical scheduling.
But the second more sophisticated interesting psychological piece is that
when you unpack the concrete details, you say, oh, on Tuesday, I'm going to drop my
kids off at school and then I'm going to go vote.
That when you, when that time arrives, and you're driving home from dropping
your kids off at school, it pops in your mind.
It's just more likely because you've created the association between that
context and the planned intention. So, what we're going to do here is study
what's the impact of adding that to voter mobilization call.
Whether you vote or not is public records, so this is the outcome measure
we're going to be using. Many people don't realize that whether
you vote, or whether you show up or not, is public.
Who you vote for, not public at all, 1892 Federal Law, secret ballot.
But whether you vote is public. So, we find when we graph here the impact
of these calls versus no call, we find that the people who receive the standard
call, please vote, it's important, it's important.
No, no effect. Just like dozens of other experiments,
reminding people of an election is, has no meaningful effect even though millions
of dollars are spent on it. Asking them, do they intend to vote,
eliciting a self-prediction, and this is the most sophisticated call as of 2008.
Asking them to elicit a self-prediction, do you intend to vote.
Everybody says, yes. Has a small effect, a two percentage
point effect. It's a real effect.
and other studies have sort of, are consistent with this.
It's in effect but it's about 2 percentage points.
This is in line with other kinds of studies on voter mobilization phone calls
without anything psychologically sophisticated in them.
It might even be a little bit smaller than that than those studies might
suggest. But adding the plan making battery, more
than doubles the impact of what was at the time the most effective get out to
vote call. So, adding a plan making battery, this
very small marginal cost addition can more then double the get out to vote
phone call. So, when I was talking about woman I
should have added, Mrs. Smith, please remember what time will you
vote, how will you get there, where will you be coming from?
That's one like of research that collaborators and I have worked on.
Another looks at how do we emphasize, how should we emphasize the way turnout is
going to be? Should we emphasize that not enough
people are voting? You hear this a lot, not enough young
people are voting, not enough low income people are voting, etc.
Or should we have them say, lots of other people joining, voting so please join
them. We, in 2004, I surveyed self-reported
experts and voter mobilization, basically political consultants who work on voter
mobilizations. And they were roughly split, 50/50, and
which is more effective, emphasizing high turnout or emphasizing low turnout?
Now, what we find across several experiments, this is with Alan Gerber at
Yale, is that emphasizing high turnout is much more effective in motivating people
to participate[COUGH] than emphasizing low turnout.
We've, we've seen this with self-reported intention to vote.
We've seen this with click through and e-mail and across a lot of other
behaviors. We see that, that people conform to the
behavior of others. And I imagine that that some of you are
familiar with that. So, when I was talking to Mrs.
Smith, I should have also said in addition to what time will you vote, how
will you get there, where will you be coming from, I should have said, join the
millions of others who are going to be voting.
Turn outs are going to be high so please join the others, emphasizing high
turnout. Even though ironically, more people
voting decreases the likelihood that you're going to be pivotal but the
likelihood that you're going to pivotal is 1 in 10 million anyway.
The likelihood that it's going to be a tie and your vote is going to be the
difference is less than the likelihood that you're going to get hit by a car on
your way to the polling place. So, a third line of research explores the
question of how do we deal with how, how should we emphasize, how should we refer
to people? Should we refer to them as voters or as
the kinds of people who can vote? And so, the underlying principle here is
that people have multiple identities. I'm a father, I'm a Philadelphia Eagles
fan. And when you elicit one identity, I'm
more likely to behave in certain ways that are consistent with it than when I
elicit another identity. So, in this case, with Carol Dweck at
Stanford and Greg Walton at Stanford and Chris Bryan who is the lead author on
this at UCSD, we did a series of experiments where we asked people to
complete a survey, in which all that we varied was whether we, we said to vote or
to be a voter. So, basically a verb or a noun.
So, for example, we say, how important is it to you to vote in the tomorrow's
election? In another condition, we say, how
important is it to you to be a voter in tomorrow's election?
So, what we find is that emphasizing the voter identity is remarkably powerful in
making people more likely to conform to that behavior.
And we see this across a series of studies both in this now in verb format,
we also see it in other studies where it's, where we say as the kind of person
who votes versus as someone who can vote. So, when I was talking to Mrs.
Smith, I should have also said, as the kind of person who votes, please be a
voter in the upcoming election, please be a voter, in addition to make a plan and
join lots of others. And now, in very recent research, that we
are just now be in the process to publishing and this is inspired by
fascinating research, that I encourage you all to look into by Alan Gerber, Don
Green, and Christian Larimer. that research showed that sending people
their vote histories and their neighbors' vote histories and also sending their
neighbors all that information, creating this sort of social pressure so that
everyone knows who voted and who didn't. And then committing to after the
election, we're going to send an update so everyone knows who voted and who
didn't. Though it's incredibly creepy and elicits
backlash and that people are very upset about it, incredibly powerful at
increasing turnout. So, what we're trying to do in this next
study is really tease apart, what is the impact of inducing accountability, the,
the, the sense that you are going to have to talk with someone, and have to
potentially justify whether you voted or not.
And so, we have this most sophisticated psychological mailer which you can see on
the screen. And it, and it basically uses all the
principles. It has a pop-out box for make a plan.
It emphasizes repeatedly as the kind of person who votes, as a voter.
It emphasizes high turnout, all the sort, all the best practices.
and what it also does for half the people, and there about 650,000 people in
this experiment, for half of them, we send them this letter.
And for the other half, and this in the 2010 general election, and the other
half, we add them in the top right corner you may be called after the election to
discuss your voting experience. Basically, this, this threat that you may
be called, so it's supposed to create the sense that maybe you may have to explain
to someone whether you voted or not. And we add a paragraph in which we also
described that. So, what we find is that adding just this
little call out box and a paragraph reiterating, basically saying we may call
you after the election, look out for our call, increased the effectiveness of that
mailer by more than 40%. So, we already have the most
psychologically sophisticated mailer that we can develop.
It uses all these best practices that we've learned from dozens or hundreds of
experiments. And then we add, just add in the
top-right corner, we may call you after the election, and we reiterated in the
text, and that increases the effectiveness by more than 40%.
So, let's pull it all together. So, when I was talking to Mrs.
Smith, I should have said, what time will you vote?
How will you get there? Where are you coming from?
And also, lots of others will vote, you should join them.
And also, you're the kind of person who votes.
Thanks for being a voter. And also, this last bit about adding the
prospect of accountability we may call you after the election, look out for our
call. So, what we see now, in the 2012
election, this research was widely used. We, we think, in total, this probably
doubles or triples the impact per dollar spent on voter mobilization.
So, there are tens of millions of dollars during the 2012 election spent on this
activity. And what we're doing here is we're,
we're, I'm now capturing as much of it as I can and I want to see and I'm going to
show you, how some of it was used. So, here's a mailer that I actually
received, saying, this is the voter report card.
You were a voter in the past, please continue to be a voter.
Be a voter this Tuesday, and it compares my turnout to others.
So, it basically says, lots of others are voting, you should join them.
Even though your past vote history, which we're now looking at appears that you
have voted less than others. This, just so everyone knows, this is an
artifact of having moved and the, the registrar had not updated my voting
record. There's no way my neighbors have voted
more than me. just want to be clear, this is data
error. Nonetheless, it's fascinating that I
received this treatment. That I've, that I've learned that has
been mailed to literally millions of people in the 2012 election, this mailer,
which emphasizes, be a voter, join lots of others who are voting.
This is an e-mail from a national security organization called the Truman
National Security Project. And if you unpack the messaging in it, it
says, lots of others are voting. Make sure you know where your, where your
voting place is, so it emphasizes, make a plan.
it emphasizes you're the kind of person who votes and, so it emphasizes all three
of those. It's a, it's a really sophisticated, and
even the subject line is do you have a voting plan?
So now, on the weekend before the election, a woman came knocking on my
door volunteering for the Elizabeth Warren campaign.
And you can see her thumb in this image here, she came, she read me a script.
It was fascinating and it reflected all of this research.
She's talking to me, asking me to make a plan, saying, lots of others are going to
vote, calling me a voter and the kind of person who votes.
It was great, so afterwards, of course, I said, yes and I do have a plan.
I know when I'm going to vote, I know where I'm going to be coming from, I know
how I'm going to get there, thank you. And would you mind if I took a picture of
your script and of your finger and your hand while you're doing it?
So, all I got was the tip of her finger, but this is a picture of the actual
script that they were using for the Elizabeth Warren campaign.
She won in the 2012 Senate race in Massachusetts against Scott Brown.
Now, here's an e-mail that was sent several weeks before the election by the
Obama campaign to their e-mail list, in which they said, make a plan.
And then they said, what time will you vote?
How will you get here? Where will you be coming from?
These are the specific questions we used in our search.
So, this is fantastic. And I presume that what they were going
to do was e-mail back to me right before the election day.
Continuing with the Obama campaign, so this is the the week the night before the
election, it says, do you have a plan for tomorrow, is the subject line.
And as you read through it, you can see all the best practices we've been talking
about. Now finally, this, I really want to focus
in on. this is the script from the Obama
campaign's calling tool. So, they had millions of calls made by
volunteers. Delivered the, the, the week before the
election, mobilizing other targets that the campaign had.
So, if you read this script, I, I called in, I logged in and made some phone calls
and I, and I, and I took a picture of the script.
This is the exact script they use, and as you unpack it, you can see each of these
things. It says, I'm calling because records
showed that you voted in 2008. we're reminding voters like you.
If you keep reading it, it says we've talked to a lot of people in your town
today who are planning to vote. This election is going to be close and we
really need your vote. But they talked to a lot of people who
are going to vote. I have your polling place listed as this,
and that the hours are this. I know everyone is busy, so what time you
plan to vote? Next question, will you be heading there
from work or somewhere else? Basically, this is, let's elicit a plan.
And then, and then finally, do you need a ride?
The, the goal of that question, of course, they're, they're, they're
ingratiating themselves, offering, we'll give you a ride, but they're also
prompting the target to make a plan. So, contrast that script with the Romney
script. So, I, I made calls, I signed, I used the
calling tool to capture the scripts for both campaigns, to see what people were
saying. And as you can see here on the screen,
the Romney script did not reflect any of the published, widely available
behavioral research, that has been proven to double and triple the impact per
dollar spent on voter mobilzation. I found this baffling and I, I don't come
at this as I'm presenting this from a partisan perspective.
It was just surprising as someone who does research and publishes his research
to find that the Obama campaign internalized this behavioral science to
maximize its impact when communicating to voters and the Romney campaign apparently
didn't use any of it. But that said, the research in total has
made a, a ton of progress in about a decade of, of focus.
So, with dozens and hundreds of experiments focused on how do we
translate behavioral science into strategies to increase voter turnout,
we've made substantial progress. To make a plan, emphasize high turnout,
emphasize the voter identity, introduce the prospect of post election
accountability. And we've, from this problem of
increasing turnout, we've managed to really build a set of tools and best
practices that made voter mobilization efforts substantially more effective,
which increased participation in elections.
In the end, this is about increasing representative, representation and
increasing participation. And it's publicly available research.
Now, thank you. Please vote.
If you want to learn more, this is my website, and I also think, if you are
interested in this research, here's a list of other political scientists who
work on voter mobilization, do fascinating work.
And also, a list of my collaborators on this research.
Thank you.