The Mobilization Solution? Face-to-Face Contact andVoter Turnout in a Municipal Election

David NivenFlorida Atlantic University

In the ongoing quest to understand and potentially improve voter turnout, many analysts have focusedtheir attention on political mobilization effects. Some scholars suggest that the failure to engage inwidespread personal mobilization efforts has contributed to declining turnout and that a recommit-ment to mobilization by parties, candidates, and others would reverse the trend. This research exploresthe effects of face-to-face mobilization efforts in select precincts in a 2001 Boynton Beach, Floridamunicipal election. Controlling for their past voting history, the face-to-face mobilization effort didincrease turnout by about five points. The results suggest that face-to-face mobilization effortsincrease turnout—at a huge cost in hours worked—but do so mostly by encouraging intermittentvoters to go to the polls.

Despite much rhetoric extolling the virtues of local governments and theircloseness to the people, municipal elections in the United States draw fewervoters to the polls than state or national contests. U.S. Presidential elections nowtypically draw about half of the eligible electorate, while municipal contestsattract just over a third of eligible citizens.1 In both categories the United Statesranks near the bottom of industrialized democracies (Teixeira 1992). Indeed, inmunicipal elections, countries such as Sweden and Austria draw twice the rate ofparticipation of the United States.2

Many scholars point to the mobilization of voters as the most promising meansof addressing low levels of voter turnout. This study examines the effect of face-to-face mobilization efforts reaching more than 2,500 voters preceding a 2001municipal election in Boynton Beach, Florida. I explore the relative effects of thequantity and quality of those mobilization efforts on turnout.

The Promise of Mobilization

As is the case with many other forms of behavior, political and otherwise,voting tends to be a habit. Americans who have voted regularly in past elections

THE JOURNAL OF POLITICS, Vol. 66, No. 3, August 2004, Pp. 868–884© 2004 Southern Political Science Association

1 Statistics from the Committee for the Study of the American Electorate, available athttp://www.gspm.org/csae

2 Statistics from the Center for the Analysis of Public Policies, University of Laval, available athttp://www.capp.ulaval.ca/cahiers/milner2.pdf.

are quite likely to continue doing so, while those who have not voted in recentelections are likely to continue not voting (Plutzer 2002). Those who do regu-larly vote, however, are by no means representative of the American population.Numerous surveys on political behavior find higher voter turnout among thosewith higher socioeconomic status [SES] (for example, Conway 2000). Moreover,even as the well educated and wealthy are more likely to vote in general, they are particularly more likely to vote in high information cost (i.e., down ballot,municipal, primary) elections than are those with lower SES (Schaffner, Streb,and Wright 2000). Presented with the unsettling picture of low and unrepresen-tative turnout, a number of scholars have turned their attention to mobilizationefforts as a potential remedy for both problems (Piven and Cloward 2000). Infact, Avey concludes that “the major reason for low turnout today is lack of mobi-lization” (1989, 123).

Support for the notion of a political mobilization effect has come in a numberof forms. For example, researchers have documented a mobilization through com-munication effect. That is, greater campaign spending (Hogan 1999), candidatecampaign appearances (Jones 1998), high-profile citizen ballot initiatives (Smith2001), and more competitive campaigns stimulate turnout (Endersby, Galatas,and Rackaway 2002), while negative campaign advertisements depress turnout(Ansolabehere and Iyengar 1997). These studies posit that by making informa-tion more easily attainable, or by making that information more interesting, cam-paigns are capable of dramatically affecting the turnout equation.

Studies, primarily based on post-election surveys, have also found direct mobilization effects. To wit, contacting prospective voters and asking them tovote appears to increase turnout (see, for example, Wielhouwer and Lockerbie1994).

Concerns about previous work on the mobilization effect have been raised byGreen and Gerber (2000a, 2000b), however, due to the likelihood of a spuriousconnection behind the results. If parties and candidates target their messages tothose likely to vote, and studies then find that those who have been contactedindeed vote more often, we may be crediting the contact with the decision to vote,when in reality it was the regularity of voting that attracted the contact. Addi-tionally, much survey-based research on mobilization relies upon National Elec-tion Studies data, which has been found to exaggerate the electoral participationof respondents to a greater degree than other surveys (Belli et al. 1999).

Field work can ameliorate both those concerns by choosing subjects frombeyond the pool of likely voters and measuring turnout by consulting official elec-tion records. A notable recent look at face-to-face mobilization efforts by Greenand Gerber (2000b) randomly targeted thousands of New Haven, Connecticut res-idents to encourage them to cast a vote in the November 1998 midterm election.Green and Gerber found that their face-to-face mobilization efforts increasedturnout about nine points among targeted individuals. Since their targets wererandomly chosen, there can be no fear that turnout was the cause, rather than theeffect, of mobilization.

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Other scholars, examining down-ballot elections, have found face-to-facemobilization effects of 7 to 20 points (Eldersveld 1956; Miller, Bositis, and Baer1981; Niven 2001, 2002; but see Carrillo 2002).3 However, scholars have not yetestablished through field studies the parameters of the effects of mobilizationefforts on those who are least likely to vote. Avey (1989), for example, proclaimsthat the proper mobilization efforts would motivate chronic nonvoters to come tothe polls, and in the process such efforts would make the active electorate fullyrepresentative of the population. But research has not addressed whether activat-ing chronic nonvoters can be achieved, or what it would require. That is, canchronic nonvoters be influenced by a single mobilizing contact, by multiple con-tacts, by contact from an ingroup member, or would it require contact from aknown individual to activate those least likely to vote?

Alarmingly, Doppelt and Shearer’s interviews of nonvoters paint a picture ofnear intractable commitment to nonvoting among many Americans. They find acombination of “alienation and complacency” among nonvoters, fueling a feelingof “futility and indifference” toward politics and voting (1999, 220). Typically,the nonvoters they studied were not awaiting further information or encourage-ment to spark their interest in voting, but instead, were consistently unmoved bythe prospect of political activity.

Realistic enthusiasm for the “mobilization solution” that some analysts advo-cate hinges, first, on the question of whether the effect actually exists amongpeople who are otherwise unlikely to vote, and second, on the degree of effortnecessary to reach these individuals. In other words, are the nonvoters Doppeltand Shearer (1999) studied capable of being reached? Or, are the mobilizationeffects that have been demonstrated largely, or perhaps entirely, dependent onimproving the turnout of people who regularly vote?

The Mobilization Messenger and Receiver

Jackson (1993) writes of the potential behavior-influencing effects of any polit-ical campaign contact as a conditional process. The effectiveness of a campaign’sefforts are by no means constant across voters, as the capacity to influence votersis in large measure dependent on their receptivity to political messages. Thus, thesuccess of any effort to mobilize voters will likely vary between voters. Forexample, Jackson (2000) finds that midterm Congressional campaigns can stim-ulate turnout among those with low participation costs (such as older, residen-tially stable citizens) but not among those with high participation costs (such asrecent movers). Concomitantly, Kahn and Kenney (1999) find that the deleteri-ous effects of negative advertising on turnout are felt more strongly among thosewith less interest and information on the campaign.

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3 Green and Gerber (2000b) note, however, that these types of studies overstate their success ratebecause targeted individuals who could not be reached were taken out of the experimental group andplaced in the control group. Thus the effect of individuals who were harder to reach, and harder tomobilize, were artificially removed from the results.

Psychological research on persuasive messages suggests two main factors thatshould shape the effects of politically mobilizing contact. First, the accessibilityof the message, the ease with which it comes to mind, affects the influence of themessage (for example, Sengupta and Fitzsimmons 2000). Second, the capacity tounderstand the message (Eagly 1974), the willingness of the targets to think aboutthe message (Fabrigar et al. 1998), and targets seeing themselves as personallyaffected by the message (Petty, Ostrom, and Brock 1981) affect the accessibilityof the appeal.

Scholarly work on persuasion suggests the aforementioned conditions neces-sary for a message to have an effect on a person’s behavior are significantly morelikely to exist within what psychologists call the intermediate or ambivalentsubject. Such a person is characterized by holding neither particularly high norlow attitude importance regarding the subject at hand. In short, when the subjectunder consideration is thought to be of moderate import, the capacity for behav-ior changing influence is greatest because their preexisting ideas neither precludeattention to further information nor are they controlling of future behavior(Armitage and Conner 2000).

By contrast, people with high attitude importance tend to be highly resistantto information because their opinions are already set and personally valued (Jacks and Devine 2000). Meanwhile, people with low-attitude importance give so little attention to information that they fail to give it any thought (Albarracin and Wyer 2001). Thus it is the intermediate person who is not only more likely to be open to a range of arguments and presentations (Marsh and Julka 2000), but also is more likely to elaborate on the message(Nienhuis, Manstead, and Spears 2001). That additional time spent thinking about the message helps the person remember the message, and it also increasesthe chances the person will consider the message important (Albarracin and Wyer 2001), opening the door for the message to have influence on future behavior.

Psychological studies therefore imply that the mobilization effect will belimited amongst those who are completely disengaged from politics because thecontact will be quickly forgotten or ignored. Meanwhile, those who already voteregularly will not likely find mobilizing contact particularly relevant since theyalready value voting. It is with those in the middle, however, who are neither fullydisengaged from politics nor fully committed to it, where the potential lies formobilizing contact to be accessible and influential.

Overall, this pattern is analogous to research conclusions that find those in themiddle of the political interest continuum are most susceptible to influentialmedia messages (for example, Zaller 1992). In the media equation, the middlecan be influenced and is accessible, and it is in the inconsistency of the middlethat the potential for significant change in their opinions or behavior lies. Con-versely, it is harder to impart behavior changing information to those who arehigher or lower in political interest because they are either set in their ways ornot paying any attention.

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Indeed, two studies of “vote by mail” elections in Oregon find it is this middle,or peripheral voter, whose behavior can most effectively be changed by alteringthe costs of voting. Both Berinsky, Burns, and Traugott (2001) and Southwell andBurchett (2000) find that reducing the costs of voting by holding an electionentirely by mail has relatively little effect on those who regularly participate sincethey were likely to vote regardless of the format. Meanwhile, voting by mail haslittle effect on those who almost never vote, since their lack of interest outweighsthe newly reduced cost in time and effort required in casting a ballot by mail.Instead, both studies conclude, it is intermittent voters, whose decision onwhether to vote is near the midpoint of their personal cost/benefit analysis, whoseturnout likelihood is susceptible to being affected by the mail election system.Similarly, Huang and Shields (2000) and Brians and Grofman (2001) find thatturnout among those in the middle in education and income is more powerfullyaffected by changes in the difficulty of registering to vote.

While this line of research suggests that mobilization effects should most likelybe seen among the middle (that is, neither the consistent voter nor the consistentnonvoter), the importance of accessibility also suggests the potential significanceof the number and types of contacts. That is, more than one contact may provemore effective than a single mobilizing contact because of the greater chance thatthe message will be retained and understood (Weiss and Pasamanick 1964). And,psychological research suggests canvassers who personally know the prospectivevoter they are contacting or are of the same ingroup (in this case, race) as theprospective voter may be more effective because any form of connection betweenthe speaker and the receiver has been found to increase the persuasiveness of themessage (Kerr 2001), positive feelings for the speaker (Silvia 2002), respect forthe speaker (Silvia 2002), and thought about the message (Van Knippenberg1999). This premise is also implied in studies that find strong mobilizing effectsfrom church group activity (Wilcox and Sigelman 2001) and from ethnic groupactivity (Shaw, De La Garza, and Lee 2000).

This study focuses on the face-to-face mobilization effort of two groups who attempted to activate voters in a 2001 municipal election. A focus on themobilizing effects of face-to-face contact is particularly promising as a personalapproach has been found to be necessary to motivate “costly” behaviors, such asblood donation, recycling, and volunteering (Jason et al. 1984; Kilgard 1999;Reams and Ray 1993). Moreover, studies find that other means of contactingprospective voters, including telephone and direct mail, are far less effective atencouraging turnout (Green and Gerber 2000b; Gerber and Green 2001).

Using individual level data, the effects of face-to-face mobilization efforts willbe assessed. Specifically, based on the implications of psychological research onpersuasion, I will explore four hypotheses regarding the power of mobilizationcontact to alter behavior:

1. Those in the middle in voting proclivity will be more strongly affected bymobilization contact.

872 David Niven

2. A mobilization contact from a person known to the prospective voter will bemore influential.

3. A mobilization contact from an ingroup member will be more influential.4. Two mobilization contacts will be more influential than one.

This inquiry brings us beyond the foundational concern of whether mobiliza-tion increases turnout to consider the very important who and how questions.Ultimately, in addressing these questions, a greater understanding should developregarding the feasibility of dramatically improving turnout through mobilizationefforts.

The Data

Data in four voting precincts of Boynton Beach, Florida are examined to explore the effects of mobilization on turnout. The election under study is the March 13, 2001 municipal election in Boynton Beach which featured a non-partisan mayor’s race pitting the incumbent mayor against a former mayor of thecity. The mayor’s race was the only item on the ballot in the four precincts understudy.4

Boynton Beach is a city of over 60,000 people, located in southeastern PalmBeach County. Of the four precincts under study, two (132A and 149) are predominantly white (92%) and two (146 and 157) are predominantly AfricanAmerican (80%). The former two precincts are politically diverse, featuring 41%registered Democrats, 39% Republican, and 20% registered independents, non-partisans, or other parties. The later two precincts are overwhelmingly Democ-ratic (75%, with 11% Republican, and 14% independent, nonpartisan, or other).

Two groups of political activists canvassed in those precincts and participatedin this study. The first was a coalition of city union members who had endorsedthe incumbent mayor and were canvassing prospective voters seeking theirsupport and participation in the election. The second was a coalition of churchand civic organizations whose focus was on improving political participationamong residents in their surrounding neighborhoods. Both groups used volun-teers to knock on doors, offer a brief message about the election, and leave a flier.Volunteers for both groups carried voter registration forms for any unregisteredpeople they encountered.

The researcher agreed to assist both groups in their canvassing efforts (withmaps and lists of voters organized by street5 and with a summary report on theeffectiveness of their efforts), and both groups agreed to have their volunteersrecord and share with the researcher a card for each address they visited. The

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4 While there were two city commission races also being contested, those races were for districtswithin the city (not at-large) and were not on the ballot in the four precincts examined here.

5 Lists for the union canvassers were built from voting records supplied by the Supervisor of Elec-tions office. Lists for the civic canvassers were built from property address files supplied by the Prop-erty Appraiser’s office.

cards recorded the address, name(s) of anyone the volunteer spoke to at the home,the receptiveness of the person, whether the canvasser and the target knew eachother, and the race of the canvasser and the target. This information was latermatched against the voting records of each resident of the precincts under studyto assess the effectiveness of the mobilization effort.

The union group canvassed precincts during three weekends prior to the elec-tion. The civic group’s canvass began five weeks before the election. While theunion knocked only on doors with registered voters listed who had cast a vote inthe last three elections, the civic group went door to door regardless of the votinghistory of the occupants. Ultimately, the union group canvassed all four precincts,while the civic group canvassed only the two predominantly African Americanprecincts (Precincts 146 and 157). In all, of the 7,027 registered voters in the fourprecincts (and the estimated 9064 eligible persons), the union group made contactwith 1,527 prospective voters, and the civic group 1,429 prospective voters. 382of those people were contacted by both groups, meaning that the two groups madecontact with 2,574 people.

Studying Precincts in a City Election

The approach employed here, examining a mobilization effort within an actualcity election contest, is implicitly called for by scholars who have concluded thata much richer picture of voter behavior can be gained by going beyond a tradi-tional national survey of voters to better achieve an understanding of the contextwithin which a person decides whether to vote (Lavine and Snyder 2000). AsGreen and Gerber (2000a) note, there is no better place to study political behav-ior than in the field.

Studying turnout in one race offers the advantage of context. That is, based onreports from the candidates involved and other activists, the possibility of othermobilization activity affecting turnout can be excluded, ultimately affordinggreater confidence that the face-to-face mobilization effect can be realisticallyassessed.6 While the four precincts are by no means representative of any largerbody, they collectively include a quite diverse group whose voting habits (in termsof turnout) tend to mirror that of the state of Florida as a whole.

Municipal elections are also a quite significant forum for studying turnout.Given low turnout levels, it is here where the most dramatic effects of solvingthe turnout riddle would be felt. In Florida, municipal elections in the last decadehave drawn less than 20% of eligible voters to the polls.7 Further, municipal elec-tions in Florida present the challenge for voters of making a decision between

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6 The two candidates in the race, as well as several political activists, were asked if they were awareof any other door to door canvassing efforts under way in these precincts. Beyond the union and civicgroup, there were no other neighborhood canvassing efforts undertaken by candidates or other partiesin the precincts studied.

7 Statistics available from the Florida State Division of Elections, http://election.dos.state.fl.us.

candidates without using party label as a guide. This calls for developing a candidate-specific understanding of issue positions and other relevant informa-tion, a task few voters are eager to perform (Aldrich 1995). Thus, electionswithout party labels draw not only fewer voters, but far fewer low SES voters(Schaffner, Streb, and Wright 2000).

To make comparisons based on voting regularity, the 7,027 registered votersin the four precincts were divided into three groups based on their behavior beforethe March 13, 2001 election: consistent voters (those who had voted in each ofthe three elections in the year 2000, which encompassed a general election,primary, and municipal election), intermittent voters (those who had voted, butnot all three times, in the three elections), and seldom voters (those who had notvoted at all in the three elections). Of the 7,027 registered voters in the sample,15.8% were consistent voters, 42.7% were intermittent voters, and 41.6% wereseldom voters. Based on the city’s estimated number of adult residents (with esti-mated ineligible persons removed), an additional 2,037 residents were estimatedto be living in the four precincts without being registered to vote.

Among the 1,527 people contacted by the union effort, 26% were consistentvoters, 45% were intermittent voters, 24% seldom, and 5% unregistered.8 Thoughskewed toward regular participants, the clear majority of targets were not con-sistent voters. (The inclusion of seldom voters, who were outside the union’starget, occurred because of multivoter households which were chosen for inclu-sion based on the presence of a consistent or intermittent voter, but where themobilization message was shared with whomever happened to answer the door).Given their willingness to knock on doors regardless of whether there were reg-istered voters listed, the distribution was quite different for the civic group.Among the 1,429 people they contacted, 16% were consistent voters, 39% wereintermittent voters, 29% seldom voters, and 15% unregistered.

In neither group was a significant difference in the receptivity to their visitbased on the regularity of voting. That is, consistent, intermittent, seldom, andunregistered voters were about as likely to listen to the canvasser. The differencein ability to reach consistent voters seems to be the result of a greater likelihoodof residential stability—as fewer consistent voter addresses produced vacant or“not at this address” remarks on the canvassers’ cards.9

Results

Did the face-to-face contact increase turnout? Table 1 (left column) presentsthe proportion of voters who turned out for the election controlling for theirvoting history and whether they were contacted. Comparing those who were not

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8 These numbers include only those who were recorded as speaking, and giving their name, to acanvasser. If no one was home, or the door slammed on the canvasser, those individuals are notincluded.

9 On the effects of residential mobility, see, for example, Jackson 2000.

contacted to those who were, it is clear that face-to-face contact increased voter turnout among the consistent, intermittent, and seldom voters (differencesignificant at the p < .05, using c2). However, the size of the effect is by no meansconstant. Contact with the intermittent voter had the greatest effect, increasingtheir likelihood of voting by 13 points. This is more than twice the size of theeffect on consistent voters and almost seven times the effect of contact on seldomvoters.

Because Florida election laws require voters to be registered 29 days beforean election to be eligible to vote, only those unregistered potential voters whowere contacted in the first week of the civic group’s efforts are included in theanalysis. Their turnout is compared to the estimated number of unregisteredvoters in the precincts, and the actual election office data on first time voters inthe election. The canvassing effort appears to have raised turnout among theunregistered from approximately two-in-a-thousand chance of voting to three-in-one-hundred chance of voting—a tiny difference in proportion to the overall elec-torate, but a huge improvement in relation to the number of unregistered whoultimately participated.

Table 1 (right column) further breaks down the effect of contact by two factors:whether the canvasser knew the target and whether the target received one or twocontacts. (Because both groups canvassed precincts 146 and 157, some houseswere visited twice. Given the smaller number of cases, people contacted twicehave been combined into one category regardless of whether they knew thecontact person). Overall, two visits did improve turnout more than one visit, andvisits by a known person did have a greater effect than did visits by an unknownperson. However, again the effects varied considerably by voting history. Themost dramatic effects were again seen among intermittent voters, who producedthe greatest increase in turnout in response to a second visit, and the greatestincrease in turnout in response to a visit from a known person.

While the target person knowing the canvasser produced an improvement inthe mobilization effect, there was no statistically significant difference based on

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TABLE 1

Turnout in Municipal Election by Mobilizing Contact

Turnout Increase following contact

No Contact Contact One Unknown One Known Two

Consistent .34 .39+ .03+ .05+ .06+Intermittent .10 .23+ .08+ .12+ .15+Seldom .02 .044+ .015+ .02+ .025+Unregistered .001 .037+Overall .113 .268+ .045+ .067+ .084+

N = 9064.+p > .05, c2.

ingroup status (not shown). That is, after controlling for whether the two peopleknew each other, neither white nor African American canvassers had a signifi-cantly greater effect on turnout of white or African American targets.

The unregistered are not included in these comparisons due to the smallnumber of eligible cases. However, even though it is beyond the scope of thisstudy to determine the final effects of the effort, it should be noted that the can-vassers also signed up an additional 162 voters who registered, but were not eli-gible to vote in the 2001 election. Some research suggests that one of the mostpowerful effects of mobilization drives is felt through increasing registration(Brown, Jackson, and Wright 1999).

Thus, the bivariate results offer support for the hypothesis 1 (mobilizationeffect will be greater on intermittent voters), 2 (contact from a known person willbe more influential), and 4 (two contacts will be more influential), but fail tosupport hypothesis 3 (contact from an ingroup member will be more influential).

Do these apparent effects of contact stand up against other variables thoughtto influence turnout? A logistic regression model was created to address this ques-tion. The dependent variable is voting in the March 13, 2001 election. As inde-pendent variables, age, race, number of voters in the household, and turnout inthe voting precinct are utilized as indicators of demographic influences onturnout.10 Personal turnout history, which studies find to be the single best pre-dictor of turnout, is also included (Plutzer 2002). Contact is included as a seriesof dummy variables reflecting which form of contact the target received (none,one known, one unknown, or two) and is also included in an interaction with per-sonal turnout history. An ingroup variable reflects whether contact was from aperson of the same race. All variables have been coded to produce a positive coef-ficient if the relationship is in the expected direction.

The results in Table 2 reveal a rather consistent and unsurprising picture ofmunicipal election turnout in a model which correctly accounts for the turnoutdecision of 93.8% of voters and achieves a Cox and Snell R2 of .47. The fourdemographic variables are all positive—meaning older whites with more votersin their household and higher turnout in their precinct were more likely to cast aballot. For example, applying the odds ratio for each of those variables suggestsa 65-year-old white person living with one other voter in a precinct with 40%voter turnout in the last election had a 37% likelihood of voting. Meanwhile, an18-year-old African American living with zero voters in a precinct with 15% voterturnout in the last election had an 8% likelihood of voting.

Nevertheless, the largest personal factor was turnout history. Those who hadvoted in each of the three previous elections are estimated to have been 36% morelikely to vote than those who had missed each of the three previous elections. For

Face-to-Face Contact and Voter Turnout in a Municipal Election 877

10 Age, race, number of voters in household, and precinct turnout are related to the kinds of influ-ences most studies find among SES variables (Highton and Wolfinger 2001). This information is keptin the voter registration file. Ideally, education and income would be included as well, but no indi-vidual level data are available for those variables.

the two voters mentioned in the above example, consistently voting in the pastraised the estimated likelihood of their voting to 73 and 44%, respectively.

More significantly for the mobilization issue, though, contact remains animportant factor in turnout when measured against these other variables. Contactincreased turnout, depending on the situation, up to 10 points. This finding offersfurther validation of the bivariate results and bolsters the findings of other studieson face to face contact. Table 3 takes the regression results and estimates theeffect on turnout for the various forms of mobilizing contact on consistent, inter-mittent, and seldom voters.11

As depicted in Table 3, the effects of all versions of contact were greater onintermittent voters than on consistent or seldom voters, offering clear support tohypothesis one. Hypothesis two suggested the effects would be greater if the can-

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TABLE 2

Factors in Turnout in Municipal Election Logistic Regression

Unstandardized coefficient Odds Ratio

Age .001* 1.002Race .05* 1.08Number of Voters in Household .04* 1.04Precinct Turnout .01 1.003Personal Turnout .45* 1.12One Known Contact .56* 1.02One Unknown Contact .47* 1.01Two Contacts .68* 1.03Interaction: Contact/Consistent Voter .05* 1.02Interaction: Contact/Intermittent Voter .22* 1.07Ingroup Contact -.01 .99Constant -.84*Percent Correct (Model) 93.8Default Correct (Random) 83.7Improvement +10.1c2 501.05Cox and Snell R2 .47N 7,027

Coding: age (years of age), race (0 = nonwhite, 1 = white), number of voters in household (thenumber of registered voters at that address), precinct turnout (turnout in 2000 municipal election),personal turnout (number of votes cast in last three elections), one known contact, one unknowncontact, and two contacts (0 = no, 1 = yes), Interaction: Contact/Consistent Voter, and Interaction:Contact/Intermittent Voter (0 = no, 1 = yes), Ingroup contact (0 = no, 1 = yes).

*p < .05.

11 For the estimate, variables other than contact are set to their means (Age = 49.6, Race = .52,Number of Voters in Household = 1.9, Precinct Turnout = 19.7, Personal Turnout = 1.11). Other vari-ables, including the date of contact and which group (union vs. church/civic) made contact did notprove significant, and were not included in the final regression model.

vasser knew the target—and this too finds support—although the estimated dif-ference results in only a one-point increase in turnout over contact from anunknown canvasser. Hypothesis four predicted two contacts would have a greatereffect than one. This was also borne out in the data, although again the effectswere modest, with two contacts resulting in a two-point increase over oneunknown contact, and one-point increase over one known contact.

Hypothesis three suggested that canvassers in the target person’s ingroup wouldhave a greater effect. This was not the case in the data, as ingroup status did nothave a statistically significant effect. Platow, Mills, and Morrison (2000) suggesta potential explanation for the failure of the expected effect. They find addedingroup influence only when the message is central to group identity. That is,unless the message triggers feelings related to group status, the influence of amessenger is not enhanced by ingroup status. The mobilizing message here didencourage voting, but not emphasize group status, and therefore did not attemptto capitalize on this potential influence enhancement.

Time Cost

Truly understanding these data requires one to step back and consider whatthese results mean for organizing a mobilization effort and actually affectingpeople’s behavior. Thus, Table 3 also presents estimates of the time expenditurenecessary to activate a single additional voter given various circumstances.

In conversations with the leaders of the two groups of canvassers, they reportedthat most people who were home were willing to listen to their brief presenta-tion, but that in any given neighborhood canvass no one answered the door inhalf or more of the homes. As such, finding a voter ready and willing to talk wasreported to take about five minutes.

Using the odds ratios, the number of people needed to contact to create oneadditional voter was calculated. That number was then multiplied by the esti-

Face-to-Face Contact and Voter Turnout in a Municipal Election 879

TABLE 3

Estimated Mobilization Effect

Increase by Contact Minutes Expended by Contact

One Unknown One Known Two One Unknown One Known Two

Consistent .03 .04 .05 166.6 125 200Intermittent .08 .09 .10 62.5 55.5 100Seldom .01 .02 .03 500 250 333.3

Note: Increase by contact is the estimated increase in turnout due to the mobilizing contact (basedon the logistic regression model). Minutes expended is the estimated number of minutes required toactivate one additional voter (based on the logistic regression model and average-time-per-votercontact).

mated time cost per contact to arrive at an estimate of how long a canvasser mustwork to increase turnout by one person.

As Table 3 reveals, it is only among intermittent voters where an additionalvoter can be found in an hour’s work. Among the consistent voters, motivating anew voter costs up to three hours of work. Among the seldom voters, adding anadditional participant costs as much as eight hours of work. While adding a voteris somewhat more efficient when the canvasser knows the target, the effects hardlymake the process easy or efficient. Moreover, second contacts, given the doubleinvestment of time, prove to be significantly less efficient.

Clearly, even as face-to-face mobilization has an effect, it is a grueling processto activate any large quantity of voters. To dramatically affect turnout, thesenumbers suggest an incredible outlay of man hours must be expended, especiallyto affect those who seldom vote. It would seem the prospects for mobilization tomake voting a near universal practice are quite slim.

Nonetheless, the effect on intermittent voters is important and bears our atten-tion. The data clearly suggest that more people voted in this municipal electionthan would have absent the two groups’ efforts expended to personally contactvoters. The capacity, even in low information settings, to encourage turnoutamong intermittent voter also has significant implications for diversifying theelectorate (Schaffner, Streb, and Wright 2000).

Alternative Explanations

Was the increase in turnout shown here due to face-to-face contact or to someother campaign tactic? Undoubtedly these registered voters were exposed to mes-sages from the two mayoral candidates, for example. While it is not possible tostudy the effects of face-to-face contact in complete isolation from other formsof campaign contact, Green and Gerber (2000b) conclude that other forms ofcampaign communication have little effect on turnout. Moreover, to the extentsuch communication efforts did have an effect, the campaigns’ general emphasison consistent voters as targets for direct mail and telephone calls would exacer-bate the turnout gap between consistent and intermittent voters, but would notparticularly affect the conclusions presented here.

Another concern, raised by the work of Carrillo (2002) and Green and Gerber(2000b), is the effect of deadwood on the voting roles. In a study of mobiliza-tion efforts, the contacted group will enjoy the advantage of definitely living inthe voting district. Those who were not contacted, conversely, will include manypeople who remain on the voting rolls but no longer reside in the area. Thus, acomparison between the contacted and the noncontacted is likely to show aturnout advantage for the former group, even if mobilization has no effect, basedmerely on the higher likelihood of the contacted living in the district. To examinethis possibility, a random sample of 300 voters who were not contacted wasdrawn. Each of those names was checked against the telephone directory, theproperty appraiser’s office files, and the city water company property list. In the

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process, a turnout rate can be calculated among those who were not contactedand were confirmed still living in one of the four precincts.

Removing those individuals who were not listed at that address in any of thethree sources does improve the apparent turnout of the noncontacted group, butonly marginally. That is, turnout overall among those who were not contacted was11.3%. With apparent movers removed from the equation, turnout for this grouprises to 13.1%. However, the basic thrust of the conclusions presented hereremains. Which is to say, turnout among intermittent voters remains up to 10points higher for the contacted than for the confirmed resident noncontacted.Meanwhile, turnout remains marginally higher among the contacted consistentvoter, and slightly higher among the contacted seldom voter.

Conclusion

The capacity to mobilize voters has been held up by many analysts as a mostpromising vehicle to reverse the long standing decline in voter turnout in U.S.elections. Overall, the results show that turnout increased among those who hadface-to-face contact with the union or civic group canvassers. That effect wasgreatest among those who vote intermittently but not consistently, who were upto 10 points more likely to vote after the face-to-face contact. Contact was leasteffective in changing the behavior of those who seldom vote, who became onlyone to three points more likely to vote after contact. While using canvassersknown to the targets marginally improved the effect, making multiple contactsincreased turnout but lowered the overall efficiency of the effort.

The value of face-to-face contact appears to be, then, a matter of interpreta-tion. Which is to say, these results, and previous studies, find mobilizing contactimproves turnout. However, many, indeed most people, appear beyond the reachof mobilization efforts. Moreover, an interest in making the electorate fully rep-resentative or dramatically larger through mobilization seems to call for some-thing close to a perpetual investment of time and effort.

Acknowledgment

A previous version of this paper was presented at the 2002 Annual Meeting ofthe Midwest Political Science Association.

Manuscript submitted September 5, 2002Final manuscript received October 9, 2003

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David Niven is associate professor of political science, Florida Atlanic Uni-versity, Boca Raton, FL 33431 (dniven@fau.edu).

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