OUR MISSION
WHO VOTES
AND WHY THAT
MATTERS FOR
PROGRESSIVES
When voters stay home, Republicans win. In 2016, Donald Trump was able to win the presidency with fewer total votes than Mitt Romney got in 2012. That’s because turnout was the lowest in nearly two decades.
When voters turn out, Democrats win. 2018 saw the highest midterm turnout in 100 years*. It took a lot of hard work to achieve that — and if we want the same thing to happen in 2020, we need to double down on our investment and build an early presence in key districts.
Why? Voter turnout actually changes the composition of the electorate: its makeup is more conservative when turnout it low, and more liberal when turnout is high. Low-turnout elections see an even larger dropoff in turnout for voters of color, young voters, and low-income voters. There are many reasons for this divide in turnout. One main factor: laws that make it harder to vote disenfranchise large swaths of voters. Another: sporadic voters are more mobile and harder for campaigns to reach. That’s where Progressive Turnout Project comes in.
*Source: Young people actually rocked the vote in 2018, new Census Bureau data finds
Our focus on turnout stems from our teams belief that getting Democrats to the polls is the most effective way to win elections. We’re part of a proud tradition of progressives using data and behavioral science to hone campaign strategy. We synthesize existing research and run our own experiments on new tactics to make sure our programs have the largest return on investment possible.
What Other People Do: TV Ads, Persuasion and Rules of Thumb
Traditional wisdom says that campaigns should focus their resources on persuading regular voters to cast their ballot for a specific candidate instead of worrying about turnout. They believe that the best tool to persuade those regular voters is TV advertising and that belief is reflected in the way campaigns spend their money. In 2014, congressional campaigns spent the majority of their budgets, more than 320 million dollars, running a mixture of positive and negative TV ads on broadcast television in the few weeks leading up to the election4.
Unfortunately, there’s very little evidence that broadcast TV reaches those targeted voters or works to persuade them when it does. A study conducted by Google found that 75% of the ads congressional campaigns ran in 2014 didn’t even air in the candidate’s district due to the way media markets are shaped5. Even worse? Studies show that it’s nearly impossible for a TV ad to make someone switch their vote6.
What We Do: Data, Data, Data and Turnout
Our focus on turnout stems from our team’s belief that getting Democrats to the polls is the most effective way to win elections. We’re part of a proud tradition of progressives using data and behavioral science to hone campaign strategy. We synthesize existing research and run our own experiments on new tactics to make sure our programs have the largest return on investment possible.
Decades of research has shown that one-on-one voter contact is the best way to get Democrats to the polls. For example, experiments have shown that having conversations at the door increases turnout more than 7 percent and makes a lasting impact on voting behavior7. Sending voters their own voting record or their community’s voting record has been proven to increase turnout as much as 6 to 8 percent8. Check out more of our tactics and research initiatives here:
