Courtesy of Zata3 – Decades of research have produced a large volume of information on voting behavior in this country.  In the last few years we’ve seen this mountain of research grow even higher with a series of groundbreaking studies by social scientists on why people vote. We’ve reviewed the literature compiled by experts in America’s leading universities in an effort to better understand what motivates people to vote.  The points laid out below are a distillation of thousands of hours of independent research and hundreds of pages of research reports by many of the brightest minds in academia.

Our recap of their findings comes from a practitioner’s perspective—we are in the GOTV business and are convinced these are valuable insights that can help our clients improve voter turnout.  We’ve provided references to original research for a detailed explanation of how the scientists arrived at each conclusion.

            People are more likely to vote after they have promised someone else that they will vote.ⁱ This tactic works better for the occasional voters than for those who consistently vote or who are infrequent voters.ⁱⁱ

            People are more likely to vote if they self-predict that they will vote and are then given a follow up question asking why they think they should vote. ⁱⁱⁱ

            People are more likely to vote after they are reminded they are good citizens who regularly vote.^iv This tactic works better the more it is true (the more frequent the voter they are).^v

            People are more likely to vote after they report over the phone their intention to vote and are then called back with a reminder.

            People are more likely to vote after hearing over the phone that we know their recent vote history. This tactic works better in high profile elections.^vi

            People are more likely to vote after hearing a message emphasizing high expected turnout rather than low expected turnout.^vii

            People are more likely to vote after a phone conversation where they walk through their plan to vote on Election Day.^viii

            People are more likely to vote if they go through an exercise over the phone in which they picture themselves voting from a third person perspective.^ixThis tactic works better with people who see themselves as the kind of people who vote than those who don’t see themselves as the kind of people who vote.^x

            People are more likely to vote if they are reminded/convinced that they are part of a group whose fortunes are impacted on Election Day.^xi This tactic works better with moderate voter frequency and has less impact with “super voters” or those who seldom or never vote.^xii

            People are more likely to vote if they first agree to relatively smaller request prior to Election Day (“foot-in-the-door” technique).^xiii

Zata|3 helps elect Democrats and advance progressive causes. We’re based in Washington, DC with an office in Mississippi. We integrate telephone voter contact programs with a campaign’s other messaging. Zata|3 offers a full range of automated and live calling programs, from the initial ID call to the final GOTV message.  We’ve also developed another set services to reach your targeted voters: SMS (text) messaging, Zata|Forum™ Telephone Town Halls, Zata|Pulse® Interactive Automated Surveys, and, coming soon, web-based Zata|Live™ Video Forum Town Halls. For more information, visit: http://zata3.com.