2 Primaries Substudy: This substudy looked at the general election voter turnout effects of sending an additional postcard to the participants who received primary postcards in the 2 primaries postcard study. We found that the second postcard had no effect on turnout, and people who received only primary postcards actually turned out at a higher rate in the general election than people who received another postcard ahead of the general. Read more here.

Primary Pipeline Analysis: This analysis looked at the 2020 general election turnout of the targets from both the postcard postmark and the two primaries postcard studies. There were no downstream effects from the postcard postmark study, but the two primaries study had some suggestive evidence it may have been somewhat effective in increasing voter turnout in the general. Read more here.

Phonebank/Canvass Postcard Chase Full Study: To follow up on the pilot, we ran a larger study in 2020 with 6 candidates across 4 states. We found similar results, that the effect of the postcards depended on which campaign they were used for, though the interaction did not rise to statistical significance. This indicates that this tactic has not worked well in our samples, but that it may work among certain constituencies. Read more here.

3 Wave Educational Postcards: In the first half of 2019, we sent 3 waves of educational postcards to voters in Mississippi, Louisiana, and Virginia to see if using voter contact early in the year to establish an ongoing relationship was related to mobilizing voters for primary and general elections. We found that postcards had a marginally significant backlash that was related to decreased levels of primary voting. Further, general messages appeared to elicit more backlash than specific messaging. Read more here.

2 Primaries Postcards: This study sought to determine if 2 waves of primary GOTV postcards, one ahead of the state primary and one ahead of the general, would increase the level of voting in both primaries. We found that people who received postcards had higher voting rates in both primaries that people who did not receive postcards (voting rates increased by 1.54-1.61%). Read more here.

Phonebank/Canvass Postcard Chase Pilot: This pilot study tested the idea that a postcard sent to “chase” a previous successful voter contact via phone or canvass could help to amplify the impact of the earlier voter contact. While people who received the chase postcards voted at a slightly higher level, the results were not statistically significant. There was a significant interaction that suggested that the effect of postcards depended on the candidate they supported. Read more here.

Covid-19 Voting Survey: In July 2020, we partnered with researchers at the University of Michigan and sent invitations to participate in a survey about coronavirus and voting to approximately 50,000 randomly selected voters in 3 states in distinct regions of the US. We found that voters’ partisanship scores and perceived vulnerability to disease were significantly related to their negative and positive feelings about voting and transportation locations; support for a variety of socially distanced and absentee voting methods; and trade offs between voting and public health. Read more here.

Postcard Postmark: We tested the idea that it is preferable to send postcards to voters locally as opposed to from other cities and/or states by sending voters GOTV postcards for the 2020 primary elections in North Carolina and Texas from either inside the state or from another state. In this study, in-state postcards boosted turnout by 2.17% compared to controls and out of state postcards boosted turnout by 1.25%. This difference, though not statistically significant, indicates that postcard postmark location may have some impact on postcard effect. Read more here.

GOTV Texting: We evaluated the efficacy of GOTV texting, and specifically the function of persuasion content around the act of voting itself in GOTV texts in Mississippi in 2019. We found that receiving a text message actually made voters less likely to vote in the 2019 General Election, and this was especially true of voters who got a persuasion message, compared to a shorter message. Read more here.

Relational Voter Turnout: We had volunteers tag Facebook friends in a status about voting in the Fall of 2018. We found that being tagged in a status made no difference on voting, but that interpersonal closeness between the tagger and the person tagged did appear to have a small effect on voting. Further, among people who were tagged, the amount they interacted on Facebook with the person who tagged them was a significant predictor of voting. Read more here.

Voting Pipeline: We took a look at who voted in 2018, to see how many of the voter registration targets from our March and September VR postcarding studies voted. We found that people who received our chaser postcards and returned the VPC voter registration form were more likely to vote than people who returned the VPC voter registration form but didn’t receive our chaser postcard earlier in the year (though this effect was not statistically significant). Read more here.

GOTV Postcards: In fall 2018, we sent 7,700 postcards to voters in Pennsylvania and Michigan, to see if receiving a handwritten postcard encouraging the voter to vote might boost turnout.  We found that neither GOTV postcarding experiment yielded significant results. However, there were several reasons this may have been the case, including issues with the representativeness of the sample and a very high rate of voter turnout overall, so this research should be replicated to draw firmer conclusions about the value of postcarding as a GOTV tactic. Read more here.