So What Does the Research Say On Relational Organizing?
Having spent the past few years working with thousands of campaigns, we’re often asked about the efficacy of relational organizing.
Prior to VoterCircle, it was extremely time intensive and/or costly to conduct this type of research. As a result, the research on the subject is limited. I found two papers in the 3rd edition of Get Out the Vote: How to Increase Voter Turnout by Donald Green and Alan Gerber of relevance. Both papers were randomized control trials (RCTs), the gold standard in political research. (If you find others, please send them our way!)
Holly Teresi and Melissa Michelson authored a paper titled “Wired to Mobilize: The effect of social networking messages on voter turnout” for the Social Science Journal. In the study, one of the researchers friended a group of university students on facebook. Half of the group was exposed to political posts about the upcoming elections while the other half received apolitical posts. The group seeing political posts from the researcher saw an 8.22 point turnout bump vs. the control group. For voters under the age of 30, the turnout bump was 10.76 points.
Tiffany Davenport’s relational email study, “Unsubscribe: The Effects of Peer-to- Peer Email on Voter Turnout; Results from a Field Experiment in the June 6, 2006, California Primary Election,” shows even stronger results. This study compared the effects of both impersonal campaign emails and personal friend-to-friend emails on voter turnout. While the effect of a campaign email was negligible (actually a slight negative), recipients of relational emails exhibited a 12–15 point turnout bump vs the control group.
Let me say that again, in case you missed it. A turnout bump of 12–15 points for voters receiving relational emails!
The turnout improvements in the above studies resemble our own internal research which has shown 5–10 point turnout bumps for general elections and 10–20 points for off-cycle and/or down ballot races. However it is important to note that the impact of relational organizing is a new area that requires more study.
(A version of this post originally ran on the VoterCircle blog)
Sangeeth Peruri is the CEO and founder of VoterCircle, a relational organizing platform that dramatically reduces the time and cost of outreach. He serves on the boards of the Los Altos School District, Boys & Girls Clubs of the Peninsula, Principal’s Exchange, Think Together and Beyond12. In his spare time, he is a fitness fanatic and competed on American Ninja Warrior 6 (check out his video here).
