Giving Voice to Latino Voters: A Field Experiment on the Effectiveness of a National Nonpartisan Mobilization Effort

Abstract

In this article, I present a summary of the findings of a randomized field experiment of 465,134 registered Latino voters, the largest such experiment on Latinos to date. The National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials’s (NALEO’s) Voces del Pueblo voter mobilization effort in 2002 explored three alternative modes of communicating with voters: direct mail, robotic phone calls, and live phone calls from volunteers. Of the three, only live phone calls produced a statistically significant increase in voter turnout. The ineffectiveness of direct mail and robotic calls is consistent with results from other experimental campaigns. What remains unclear is the extent to which direct mail and robotic calls targeting low-propensity Latino voters would be more effective in presidential elections. For the present, it appears that the most effective way to mobilize low-propensity Latino voters is through phone banks staffed by volunteers.