The Science (and Pseudoscience) of Winning Elections Donald Green Yale University

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The Science (and Pseudoscience) of Winning
ElectionsDonald Green Yale University
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What can be done to enhance ones chances of
winning the upcoming election?

• With just a week to go, its too late to recruit
  a candidate or alter the political or economic
  environment
• Too late to fundraise or build coalitions
• At this late date, strategies have been set, and
  decisions now center on tactics

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Basic tactical questions

• How will you allocate your remaining resources?
• Which voters will you target
• How will you communicate with them?

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Tactical choices boil down to two approaches to
winning votes

• Mobilization increase net votes for your
  candidate by raising the probability that target
  voters will cast ballots
• Persuasion increase net votes by raising the
  probability that target voters will vote for your
  candidate if they cast ballots

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Advantages and disadvantages of mobilization and
persuasion strategies

• Mobilization requires accurate measurement or
  forecast of voters preferences hence the
  importance of microtargeting
• Persuasion is, in principle, doubly effective
  (subtracting from the opponents vote and adding
  to your candidates) but requires an accurate
  forecast of voters turnout probabilityOften
  causes campaigns to focus on high propensity
  voters
• Campaigns are reluctant to contact opposing
  partisans for fear of mobilizing them
  inadvertentlyanother rationale for
  microtargeting

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What is microtargeting?

• An exercise in which information in the voter
  file and consumer databases are used to forecast
  survey responses and turnout
• Sometimes targeting data bases are created from
  surveys that ID voters candidate preference
• More often, however, voters preferences are
  merely forecasted based on data base information

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How does microtargeting work? Just ask the
experts
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Does microtargeting work? Just ask the experts
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Does microtargeting work? Just ask the experts
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Does microtargeting work? Just ask the experts
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How accurate is microtargeting in practice?
Example Texas 2006 Contest for Governor Using
microtargeting forecasts to predict survey
responses
Notice that the microtargeting scores do only a
so-so job of predicting who supports the GOP
candidate
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Suppose you conduct a mobilization campaign Will
your tactics work? Just ask the experts
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Heres what proof means in the unregulated
world of campaign services

• Thats some robo call!

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Or you could turn to academic experts, who tend
to rely on survey research

• How about comparing those who say they received
  calls or visits or mail from a campaign to those
  who did not?
• Problem 1 Campaigns neither target nor contact
  voters at random
• Problem 2 People do not report campaign contacts
  reliably
• Problem 3 Even if survey respondents are
  perfectly accurate in their reports, the
  questions are vague (e.g., Did someone from a
  campaign come around or call you up? When?
  How? How often?)

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A new science of voter mobilization using
randomized field experiments to evaluate
mobilization tactics

• Lists of registered voters (or in some cases,
  towns or media markets) are randomly assigned to
  treatment or control groups
• Interventions are directed at the treatment group
  (statistical adjustments for failure to contact
  the intended voter)
• Turnout records from registrars are used to
  compare voting rates in treatment and control
  groups

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Headlines from 125 experiments conducted between
1998 and 2008

• Quality of interaction matters personal tactics
  such as canvassing and volunteer calls work
  better than mail, email, robo-calls, or leaflets
• Little evidence of synergy between different
  types of tactics, but growing evidence that
  obtaining commitments to vote follow up contact
  works particularly well

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Example Door-to-door canvassing of voters with
Latino surnames in Phoenix, 2003 (ACORN)
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NALEO Volunteer Phone Banks, 2002 2008
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NALEO Pre-Recorded GOTV Calls by A Univision
Anchorwoman, 2002 PICO GOTV Calls by Local
Clergy, 2006
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Example NALEOs direct mail (2-4 pieces) to
low-propensity Latino voters in four states, 2002
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Estimated effectiveness of canvassing has not
changed much with accumulation of experimental
evidence
Estimated effect of canvassing based on a
meta-analysis of 39 canvassing experiments
confirms initial estimates, translates into an
average effect of 7 percentage points per contact
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Does science merely affirm common sense? The
case of vote-by-mail balloting

• Very high rates of turnout among those registered
  as vote-by-mail voters
• Therefore, campaigns seek to register people to
  receive mail in ballots
• Experiments were conducted to test whether
  encouragement to vote by mail in fact raised
  turnout
• Treatment group was mailed VBM applications

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Vote by Mail Experiments 2006, 2007
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Scientific methods can be used to evaluate
campaign tactics, but can science-driven
campaigns innovate?

• Drawing inspiration from historical and
  comparative instances of high turnout
• Public voting
• Election Day festivals
• Block captains

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Science-led Innovation Example of following-up
with yes voters

• Trajectory of four experiments dating back to
  2003
• In 2008, Los Angeles group that targets
  Asian-Americans conducted an experiment in which
  some voters were targeted for an initial call,
  and a random subset of the yes group was
  targeted for a follow-up call
• Initial call increased turnout by 4
  percentage-points among those reached and slated
  for one round of calls
• Follow-up call increased turnout by 13
  percentage-points among those reached

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Sometimes personal contact and volunteer calls
are not feasiblethen what?

• Conveying the effects of social norms through
  direct mail and phone calls
• Direct Mail experiments
• Michigan 2006 and 2007
• Boston 2007
• Iowa 2008
• Iowa Michigan 2007
• Robo calls
• Michigan 2008

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Design of 2006 Michigan Study (Gerber, Green,
and Larimer 2008 APSR)

• Sample 180,002 households in Michigan,
  registered voters who voted in 2004
• Setting August primary election, contested only
  on the Republican side
• Assignment 10,000 clusters of 18 households
  each in each cluster, households assigned at
  random to one of five groups
• Outcome Voting in the primary election, as
  indicated by official records for each individual

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Results from the 2006 Michigan Social Pressure
Experiment
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Do presidential campaign ads mobilize? Probably
not, judging from natural experiments
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What about persuasion?

• Seems to depend on who the candidates are known
  or unknown?
• Unknown powerful effects of increasing
  name-recognition
• Known much weaker or transitory effects

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Texas Television and Radio Experiment

• Stage set for experimentation in December, but
  late filing deadline leaves primary contest up in
  the air
• Randomized the timing and volume of television
  ads in 18 of 20 media markets
• Varied the timing (not volume) of radio ads,
  mapped signal propagation zones and attempted to
  confine radio messages to DMA boundaries
• Daily tracking poll gauged whether support for
  Perry moved as media was introduced in or
  withdrawn from each market

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Rollout of Experimental TV and Radio Campaign
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Illustration of TV Effects Differenced Weekly
Data, with Fixed Effects for Week
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TV ads show big effects, but rapid decay
TVs effect
TVs effect a week later
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Conditions under which persuasion occurs?

• Novel information may account for name
  recognition effect (which in turn has interesting
  policy implications)
• Reference groups, but evidence on the
  effectiveness of endorsements (from credible
  sources) is mixed
• Emotional content, but evidence of decay

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Which is more cost-effective, mobilization or
persuasion?

• Perhaps the shift from persuasion-oriented
  campaigns to mobilization-oriented campaigns
  reflects the fact that the latter has a more
  predictable payoff
• Persuasion campaigning still attracts the bulk of
  campaign resources, but changes in the media
  environment make it increasingly difficult
• The technology for voter mobilization, on the
  other hand, has arguably made mobilization easier

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The Scientific Study of Political Campaigns
Transforming Political Practiceand Political
Science

• Political campaigns although beset by
  conflicts-of-interest, there are some incentives
  for learning particularly among enduring
  institutions (e.g., parties, unions, foundations)
• Political science slow to embrace field
  experimental methods, but research on campaign
  effects has shifted fundamentally in ten years

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The Scientific Study of Political Campaigns A
Work in Progress

• Broader message of using scientific methods to
  guide the allocation of scarce resources
• The challenge of applying science to campaign
  craft is balancing the desire to learn with the
  desire to win
• What if political scientists ran their own
  (experimental) campaigns?

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The political scientist as politician? (running
for office and losing in the name of science?)
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Where to learn more about the scientific study of
campaigns?

• GOTV II includes a mini-course on experimental
  design and an open invitation to replicate or
  challenge existing findings
• ICPSR Summer Workshop on experiments

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Acknowledgements

• Foundation support Irvine, Carnegie, JEHT,
  Boston, Pew Charitable Trusts, CIRCLE, Smith
  Richardson
• Partners in the field nonpartisan, partisan,
  campaigns, and interest groups
• Dozens of experimental researchers nationally and
  internationally

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For Further Information

• Donald P. Green
• Director, Institution for Social and Policy
  Studies A. Whitney Griswold Professor of
  Political Science
• Yale University
• 77 Prospect St.
• New Haven, CT 06520-8209
• 203-432-3237
• Email donald.green_at_yale.edu
• Web research.yale.edu/vote

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The algebra of expected net votes

• Definition expected number of votes added to
  your candidates total minus the expected number
  added to the opponents total
• Example A voter has an 80 chance of voting for
  McCain if she votes and 20 chance of voting for
  Obama. If this person has a 60 chance of
  voting, her expected net vote for McCain is
  (.80)(.60)-(.20)(.60).36 votes

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The algebra of increasing net votes through
mobilization (Levels dont matter you care about
your effect on the outcome)

• Mobilization Example A voter has an 80 chance
  of voting for McCain if she votes and 20 chance
  of voting for Obama. Suppose GOTV activity
  raises the probability of voting from 60 to 70,
  the expected net vote for McCain rises from
  (.80)(.60)-(.20)(.60).36 votes to
  (.80)(.70)-(.20)(.70).42 votes, or a gain of .06
  votes.
• Note that the stronger the McCain support, the
  bigger the returns from mobilization. (Returns
  are negative if you mobilize your opponents!)

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The algebra of increasing net votes through
persuasion

• Persuasion Example A voter has an 80 chance of
  voting for McCain if she votes and 20 chance of
  voting for Obama. If this persons probability
  of McCain support rises from 80 to 90, the
  expected net vote for McCain rises from
  (.80)(.60)-(.20)(.60).36 votes to
  (.90)(.60)-(.10)(.60).48 votes, or a gain of .12
  votes.
• Note that the higher the probability of voting,
  the bigger the returns from persuasion