{"id":4333,"date":"2003-11-19T06:01:13","date_gmt":"2003-11-19T06:01:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=4333"},"modified":"2003-11-19T06:01:13","modified_gmt":"2003-11-19T06:01:13","slug":"the-gop-and-voter-mobilization","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=4333","title":{"rendered":"The GOP and voter mobilization"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Racine, WI: I&#8217;ve been told that the Republican Party has conducted<\/p>\n<p>more than 50 randomized experiments to test which methods and<\/p>\n<p>messages most efficiently persuade people to vote. My organization,<\/p>\n<p>CIRCLE, has also funded and collected such <a href=\"http:\/\/www.civicyouth.org\/grants\/past\/pol_partic.htm\">randomized<\/p>\n<p>field tests<\/a>, although we are a nonprofit organization, so we can<\/p>\n<p>only test completely neutral, non-partisan messages (&quot;Vote for<\/p>\n<p>someone this fall&quot;). <\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>In a true experiment, you don&#8217;t just ask people to vote, check whether<\/p>\n<p>they do, and count each vote as a success. That would be a flawed methodology,<\/p>\n<p>since many people would have voted even if you hadn&#8217;t asked them. Instead,<\/p>\n<p>in a true experiment, you divide the population <em>randomly<\/em> into<\/p>\n<p>two groups, ask one group to vote, and leave the other group alone.<\/p>\n<p>Your success rate is the difference in turnout between the two groups.<\/p>\n<p>CIRCLE-sponsored experiments have found that some strategies cause many<\/p>\n<p>young people to vote; some are ineffective; and some promising approaches<\/p>\n<p>actually reduce turnout. I find it fascinating that the GOP is now using<\/p>\n<p>this method for their own planning purposes. It means, first of all,<\/p>\n<p>that a sophisticated academic methodology seems valuable to hard-nosed<\/p>\n<p>political operatives. And second, it means that Republicans are likely<\/p>\n<p>to try to mobilize people through face-to-face contact in 2004. That<\/p>\n<p>is a form of campaigning that increases participation (in contrast to<\/p>\n<p>TV advertising, which is sometimes intended to reduce the opponent&#8217;s<\/p>\n<p>turnout). Thus it is is a very beneficial development, although it would<\/p>\n<p>be unfortunate if the Democrats failed to imitate the GOP.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tuesday, Nov. 18<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Racine, WI: I&#8217;ve been told that the Republican Party has conducted more than 50 randomized experiments to test which methods and messages most efficiently persuade people to vote. My organization, CIRCLE, has also funded and collected such randomized field tests, although we are a nonprofit organization, so we can only test completely neutral, non-partisan messages [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4333","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4333","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4333"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4333\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}