Resource Type: Field Research

This article offers empirical evidence supporting a relationship between social influence and voter turnout by comparing the effectiveness of face-to-face get-out-the-vote visits by canvassers living in a voter’s local neighborhood against visits by canvassers from other neighborhoods. This study, published in 2013, looked at canvassing in Los Angeles in 2006 and attempted to discern a difference between canvassers local to the neighborhood in which they were working and those working outside where they lived. In addition, this study confirmed that low-propensity voters can be turned out to vote based on a face-to-face conversation. 

One of the seminal studies of the influence of face-to-face contact on voter turnout, this paper from 2000 by Alan Gerber and Donald Green shows that in-person contact substantial increases voter turnout, while the effect of direct mail is slight, and that of live phonecalls is nonexistent. This randomized controlled trial of 30,000 voters in Connecticut showed statistically significant effects of canvassing, results that have been replicated several times since this study was published.  The authors also claim support for their hypothesis that the long-term decline in voter turnout observed to that point was due in part to the decline in face-to-face political mobilization.