Abstract
AbstractEmail can deliver mobilization messages at considerably lower cost than direct mail. While voters’ email addresses are readily available, experimental work from 2007 to 2012 suggests that email mobilization is ineffective in most contexts. Here, we use public data to reexamine the effectiveness of email mobilization in the 2016 Florida general election. Unsolicited emails sent from a university professor and designed to increase turnout had the opposite effect: emails slightly demobilizing voters. While the overall decrease in turnout amounted to less than 1 percent of the margin of victory in the presidential race in the state, the demobilizing effect was particularly pronounced among minority voters. Compared to voters from the same group who were assigned to control, black voters assigned to receive emails were 2.2 percentage points less likely to turn out, and Latino voters were 1.0 percentage point less likely to turn out. These findings encourage both campaigns and researchers to think critically about the use and study of massive impersonal mobilization methods.
Highlights
Thirteen field experiments conducted in partnership with political campaigns find emails have essentially zero effect on voter registration or turnout
We test the impact of email messages that prime social norms about voting (Gerber and Rogers 2009)
We contact voters using a real identity to forestall concerns about deceptive messaging. While this experiment was designed to test the differential impact of injunctive and descriptive norms on turnout (Rivera, Hughes, and Gell-Redman 2016), we find no clear evidence that voters react differently to different treatment messages
Summary
Thirteen field experiments conducted in partnership with political campaigns find emails have essentially zero effect on voter registration or turnout. Email messages sent from the registrar of voters can have small, but significant positive effects on turnout.
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