Getting out the vote: Party mobilization in a comparative perspective

British Journal of Political Science

Volumn 38, Issue 1, 2008, Pages 91-112

  Karp, Jeffrey A ^a   Banducci, Susan A ^a   Bowler, Shaun ^b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF EXETER   (United Kingdom)

^b UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 37049003708     PISSN: 00071234     EISSN: 14692112     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0007123408000057     Document Type: Article

References (80)

1. Alan S. Gerber and Donald P. Green, 'The Effects of Canvassing, Telephone Calls, and Direct Mail on Voter Turnout: A Field Experiment', American Political Science Review, 94 (2000), 653-63;
2. Harold F. Gosnell, Getting-Out-the-Vote: An Experiment in the Stimulation of Voting (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1927).
3. John M. Bochel and David D. Denver, 'Canvassing, Turnout and Party Support: An Experiment', British Journal of Political Science, 1 (1971), 257-69;
4. Gerber and Green, 'The Effects of Canvassing, Telephone Calls, and Direct Mail on Voter Turnout'.
5. For a review, see David M. Farrell, Electoral Systems: A Comparative Introduction (London: Palgrave, 2001).
6. Jan Leighley, 'Attitudes, Opportunities and Incentives: A Field Essay on Political Participation', Political Research Quarterly, 48 (1995), 181-209.
7. Leighley, 'Attitudes, Opportunities and Incentives', pp. 182, 189;
8. Robert Jackson, 'A Reassessment of Voter Mobilization', Political Research Quarterly, 49 (1996), 331-49.
9. See also Samuel J. Eldersveld, 'Experimental Propaganda Techniques and Voting Behavior', American Political Science Review, 50 (1956), 154-65;
10. Roy E. Miller, David A. Bositis and Denise L. Baer, 'Stimulating Voter Turnout in a Primary: Field Experiment with Precinct Committeemen', International Political Science Review, 2 (1981), 445-60;
11. Gerber and Green, 'The Effects of Canvassing, Telephone Calls, and Direct Mail on Voter Turnout'.
12. Gary Cox, 'Electoral Rules and the Calculus of Mobilization', Legislative Studies Quarterly, 3 (1999), 387-419.
13. See, for example, Charles Pattie, Ronald Johnston and Edward Fieldhouse, 'Winning the Local Vote: The Effectiveness of Constituency Campaign Spending in Great Britain, 1983-1992', American Political Science Review, 89 (1995), 969-83;
14. in addition, see Johnston's earlier work on New Zealand: Ron Johnston, 'Resource Allocation and Political Campaigns: Notes Towards a Methodology', Policy and Politics, 5 (1976), 181-99;
15. Ron Johnston, 'The Electoral Geography of an Election Campaign: Scotland in October 1974', Scottish Geographical Magazine, 93 (1977), 98-108;
16. Ron Johnston, 'Campaign Expenditure and the Efficacy of Advertising at the 1974 General Elections in England', Political Studies, 27 (1979), 114-19;
17. Ron Johnston and P. J. Taylor, Geography of Elections (Harmondsworth, Midx.: Penguin Books, 1979).
18. G. Bingham Powell Jr, 'Voting Turnout in Thirty Democracies: Partisan, Legal, and Socio-Economic Influences', in Richard Rose, ed., Electoral Participation: A Comparative Analysis (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1980), p. 12.
19. Bruce Cain, John Ferejohn and Morris Fiorina, The Personal Vote: Constituency Service and Electoral Independence (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987);
20. Valerie Heitshusen, Garry Young and David M. Wood, 'Electoral Context and MP Constituency Focus in Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom', American Journal of Political Science, 49 (2005), 32-45.
21. John Curtice and Phil Shively, 'Who Represents Us Best? One Member or Many?' (Centre for Research into Elections and Social Trends, University of Oxford, Working Paper No. 79, 2000);
22. Shaun Bowler and David M. Farrell, 'Legislator Shirking and Voter Monitoring: Impacts of European Parliament Electoral Systems upon Legislator-Voter Relationship', Journal of Common Market Studies, 31 (1993), 45-69.
23. John M. Carey and Matthew S. Shugart, 'Incentive to Cultivate a Personal Vote: A Rank Ordering of Electoral Systems', Electoral Studies, 14 (1995), 417-39. Throughout this article we use SMD to refer to electoral systems that rely only on single-member district systems with plurality or majoritarian rules to elect members of the legislature. We use PR to refer to countries that employ proportional representation. New Zealand refers to its proportional system as MMP because of the combination of single-member districts and a proportional party list. Ultimately, MMP is proportional and we refer to the electoral system as MMP when specifically discussing the case of New Zealand and PR when discussing it in terms of a general class of electoral systems.
24. Michael Marsh, 'None of that Post-Modern Stuff Around Here: Grassroots Campaigning in the 2002 Irish General Election', Journal of Elections, Public Opinion, and Parties, 14 (2004), 245-67.
25. Jeffrey A. Karp, Shaun Bowler and Susan A. Banducci, 'Electoral Systems, Party Mobilization and Turnout: Evidence from the European Parliamentary Elections 1999', in Colin Railings, Roger Scully, Jonathan Tonge and Paul Webb, eds, British Elections and Parties Review, Vol. 13 (London: Frank Cass, 2003), pp. 210-28.
26. Kenneth R. Carty and D. Munroe Eagles, 'Do Local Campaigns Matter? Campaign Spending, the Local Canvass and Party Support in Canada', Electoral Studies, 18 (1999), 69-87.
27. Peter Esaiasson, 'Scandinavia', in David Butler and Austin Ranney, eds, Electioneering: A Comparative Study of Continuity and Change (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1992), pp. 202-16.
28. G. Bingham Powell, 'American Voter Turnout in Comparative Perspective', American Political Science Review, 80 (1986), 17-43.
29. Harold F. Gosnell, Why Europe Votes (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1930);
30. Herbert Tingsten, Political Behavior: Studies in Election Statistics (London: P. S. King and Son, 1937).
31. See also Eldersveld, 'Experimental Propaganda Techniques and Voting Behavior';
32. Bochel and Denver, 'Canvassing, Turnout and Party Support: An Experiment';
33. Miller and Bositis and Baer, 'Stimulating Voter Turnout in a Primary';
34. Gerber and Green, 'The Effects of Canvassing, Telephone Calls, and Direct Mail on Voter Turnout'. Imai provides an empirical test that calls into question Gerber and Green's findings about the effectiveness of telephone calls. He finds that telephone calls increase turnout by about 5 percentage points.
35. See Kosuke Imai, 'Do Get-Out-the-Vote Calls Reduce Turnout? The Importance of Statistical Methods for Field Experiments', American Political Science Review, 99 (2005), 283-300.
36. C. J. Pattie and Ronald J. Johnston, 'Hanging on the Telephone? Doorstep and Telephone Canvassing at the British General Election of 1997', British Journal of Political Science, 33 (2003), 303-22.
37. David Niven, 'The Limits of Mobilization: Turnout Evidence from State House Primaries', Political Behavior, 23 (2001), 335-50;
38. David Niven, 'The Mobilization Calendar - The Time-Dependent Effects of Personal Contact on Turnout', American Politics Research, 30 (2002), 307-22.
39. Bochel and Denver, 'Canvassing, Turnout and Party Support';
40. John M. Bochel and David D. Denver, 'The Impact of the Campaign on the Results of Local Government', British Journal of Political Science, 2 (1972), 239-43;
41. Ian McAllister, 'Campaign Activities and Electoral Outcomes in Britain 1979 and 1983', Public Opinion Quarterly, 49 (1985), 489-503.
42. David Denver, Gordon Hands, Justin Fisher and Ian MacAllister, 'Constituency Campaigning in Britain 1992-2001', Party Politics, 9 (2003), 541-59.
43. Paul F. Whiteley and Patrick Seyd, 'Local Party Campaigning and Electoral Mobilization in Britain', Journal of Politics, 56 (1994), 242-52;
44. Paul F. Whiteley and Patrick Seyd, 'Party Election Campaigning in Britain', Party Politics, 9 (2003), 637-52.
45. Cox, 'Electoral Rules and the Calculus of Mobilization', p. 398;
46. Powell, 'Voting Turnout in Thirty Democracies'.
47. See for example Susan A. Banducci, Todd Donovan, and Jeffrey A. Karp, 'Proportional Representation and Attitudes about Politics: Results from New Zealand', Electoral Studies, 18 (1999), 533-55;
48. Douglas Amy, Real Choices/New Voices: The Case for PR Elections in the United States (New York: Colombia University Press, 1993).
49. David M. Farrell, 'Campaign Strategies and Tactics', in Lawrence LeDuc, Richard G. Niemi and Pippa Norris, eds, Comparing Democracies: Elections and Voting in Global Perspective (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 160-83.
50. Where available parties are able to target individuals through registration lists. They can also identify voters either by relying on voting records that are available for public inspection or, when allowed, through observation at polling places.
51. Parties may also target likely voters by focusing on geographic areas known to have high turnout.
52. We have included two election studies from New Zealand, one under SMD rules and another under PR rules. A future source of data to examine these questions is the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES).
53. See Jack Vowles, 'The Politics of Electoral Reform in New Zealand', International Political Science Review, 16 (1995), 95-115, for a discussion on the reasons for reform.
54. Respondents' report of party contact is a direct measure of party mobilization efforts at getting out the vote by making personal visits and phone calls. As parties increase mobilization efforts this will be directly correlated with the number of citizens reporting such contact. Of course, as with any survey measurement that requires a recall effort there is likely to be error. Reported vote suffers from the same problem. However, our models control for the various factors that might lead to over-reporting party contact and should minimize the influence of this possible source of measurement error.
55. Voting records in the United States, Britain, Sweden and New Zealand are available for public inspection. In Canada voter lists containing names and addresses are available to registered political parties for electoral purposes. Parties are also represented at the polling station and can, therefore, record who votes. In the Netherlands, residents are required to register at the local municipality. However, these records are not generally made available. For more information on the Netherlands, see Robert J. J. Voogt and Willem E. Saris, 'To Participate or Not to Participate: The Link Between Survey Participation, Electoral Participation, and Political Interest', Political Analysis, 11 (2003), 164-79.
56. In the United States, we measure marginality by the distance between the two presidential candidates at the state level.
57. Gerber and Green, 'The Effects of Canvassing, Telephone Calls, and Direct Mail on Voter Turnout', use a variable indicating whether a subject was selected for the treatment group. Unfortunately, we are using observational data so we do not have such a measure at hand.
58. Steven J. Rosenstone and John Mark Hansen, Mobilization, Participation, and Democracy in America (New York: Macmillan, 1993).
59. However, nearly nine out of ten respondents report receiving something in the mail from a political party, indicating that parties are nevertheless making an effort to reach voters. In New Zealand under MMP, a similar proportion of citizens report receiving information in the form of a letter or pamphlet. Nearly two-thirds of Americans also report receiving information by mail. In the Netherlands, 17 per cent report receiving something by mail while in Canada 12 per cent recall receiving mail.
60. See also Ian Ward, 'Localizing the National: The Rediscovery and Reshaping of Local Campaigning in Australia', Party Politics, 9 (2003), 583-600, at p. 593.
61. Marginal seats are classified as those where the margin between first and second place is less than 5 percentage points.
62. Farrell, 'Campaign Strategies and Tactics'.
63. Kenneth M. Goldstein and Travis N. Ridout, 'The Politics of Participation: Mobilization and Turnout over Time', Political Behavior, 24 (2002), 3-29;
64. Susan A. Banducci and Jeffrey A. Karp, 'Mobilizing American Voters: A Reassessment' (paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, San Francisco, 2001).
65. We have pooled eight different election studies from the seven countries used in our analysis. While the pooling of datasets may present issues in terms of the comparability of time and survey methodology, it has been employed in previous studies (see, for example, Eva Anduiza Perea, 'Individual Characteristics, Institutional Incentives and Electoral Abstention in Western Europe', European Journal of Political Research, 41 (2002), 643-74) and is the method employed by the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems. We have paid careful attention to the comparability of questions across surveys.
66. We also estimated a reduced model regressing the four contextual variables on contact aggregated by country (n = 8). The results for these variables were similar to those reported in the individual level model.
67. We use the effective number of legislative parties. As we expect that with an increased number of parties, there will be more party contacting, we also tried an alternative measure of multi-partyism using the number of parties represented in parliament. Each performed similarly in the pooled model, so we have opted to use the more familiar measure of the effective number of parties.
68. André Blais and Agnieszka Dobrzynska, "Turnout in Electoral Democracies', European Journal of Political Research, 33 (1998), 239-61.
69. Cox, 'Electoral Rules and the Calculus of Mobilization';
70. Powell, 'American Voter Turnout in Comparative Perspective'.
71. Arend Lijphart, Patterns of Democracy: Government Forms and Performance in Thirty-Six Countries (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1999);
72. André Blais and R. Kenneth Carty, 'Does Proportional Representation Foster Voter Turnout?' European Journal of Political Research, 18 (1990), 167-81;
73. Robert W. Jackman, 'Political Institutions and Voter Turnout in the Industrial Democracies', American Political Science Review, 81 (1987), 405-23.
74. David Denemark, 'Electoral Change, Inertia, and Campaigns in New Zealand: The First Modern Campaign in 1987 and the First MMP Campaign in 1996', Party Politics, 9 (2003), 601-18;
75. David Denemark, 'Campaign Activities and Marginality: The Transition to MMP Campaigns', in Jack Vowles, Peter Aimer, Susan Banducci and Jeffrey Karp, eds, Voter's Victory? New Zealand's First Election Under Proportional Representation (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 1998), pp. 81-100.
76. Jeffrey Karp and Susan Banducci, 'Political Parties and Mobilisation', in Jack Vowles, Peter Aimer, Susan Banducci, Jeffrey Karp and Raymond Miller, eds, Voter's Veto: The 2002 Election in New Zealand and the Consolidation of Minority Government (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2004), pp. 104-16.
77. Jack Vowles, 'Offsetting the PR Effect? Party Mobilization and Turnout Decline in New Zealand, 1996-1999', Party Politics, 8 (2002), 587-605.
78. Gary Cox and Michael C. Munger, 'Closeness, Expenditures, and Turnout in the 1982 US House Elections', American Political Science Review, 83 (1989), 217-31.
79. David Denver and Gordon Hands, 'Marginality and Turnout in British General Elections', British Journal of Political Science, 4 (1974), 17-35.
80. Eric Plutzer, 'Becoming a Habitual Voter: Inertia, Resources, and Growth in Young Adulthood', American Political Science Review, 96 (2002), 41-56.