Does It Matter If Your Buddy Emails to Say "Go Vote for Jones"?
BY Nancy Scola | Thursday, October 21 2010
Photo credit: Dean TerryTate Hausman's casual musings about the power of people writing personal "go out and vote, and vote for these folks" emails, which I linked to yesterday, has some progressive organizers who study the numbers saying hang on there just a minute. Hausman updates his post:
Since publishing this piece, it has zoomed around various activist lists and generated a lot of controversy. In particular, the well-respected social scientists of the Analyst Institute showed me research proving that self-reporting of voting was absolutely unreliable -- a fact that I suspected and noted, but didn’t have the data to prove. And Becky Bond of CREDO showed me a study that found peer-to-peer GOTV appeals to have zero effect on turnout.
That said, the research that Hausman's citing here focuses on pure voter turnout, not the internal quality of a vote. In other words, you can see where someone might, say, go out and dutifully vote in New York's primary election but take a pass on making selections in down-ballot races like for city councilmember or even attorney general because they didn't feel informed; that might be where an emailed note from a politically-aware friend is going to equip you with just enough savvy to notch a vote in one candidate or another's column. You might not need help voting for mayor but you might could use some guidance on dog catcher. It's often the latter races where just a few votes might make a difference. Center for American Progress researcher-turned-candidate for the Maryland Delegates Judd Legum has, for example, pointed out that last time his race was won by a mere 53 votes. That's a few siblings, a handful of cousins, and their friends.
But, bigger picture, it's downright intriguing that there are folks studying the numbers, turning GOTV annecdotes into something closer to science. The above-cited Analyst Institute, for example, sprung up from the left's Internet-savvy organizing base, and likes to talk about itself as "Moneyball for progressive politics." Game on.