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New VTP working paper, "Mobilizing Pasadena Democrats: Measuring The Effects of Partisan Campaign Contacts"

Along with Betsy Sinclair (University of Chicago, Political Science) and Asa Hopkins (Caltech, Division of Physics, Mathematics and Astronomy), we just finished a working paper version detailing a field experiment project we have been working on for some time, "Mobilizing Pasadena Democrats: Measuring the Effects of Partisan Campaign Contacts". Here's the paper's abstract:

This paper examines the effect of an entire campaign using a randomized ?eld experiment where the treatment consists of campaign decisions made by a campaign manager. In contrast to the majority of the ?eld experiments found in the contemporary get-out-the-vote literature, this paper studies the actual behavior of a campaign within a particular election as opposed to studying particular mobilization tactics. Thus, the campaign itself chooses which method to contact each individual within the randomly assigned treatment group. Contacts are made via face-to-face canvassing, phone calls, emails, and doorhangers and consist of experienced volunteers making partisan appeals. We observe a large treatment effect of campaign contact despite a small number of face-to-face contacts, suggesting that the targeting strategy of the campaign manager is particularly effective.

Full post as published by Election Updates on July 08, 2008 (boomark / email).