Walking the walk? Experiments on the effect of pledging to vote on youth turnout

PLoS One. 2018 May 29;13(5):e0197066. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0197066. eCollection 2018.

Abstract

Psychological theories of political behavior suggest that commitments to perform a certain action can significantly increase the likelihood of such action, but this has rarely been tested in an experimental context. Does pledging to vote increase turnout? In cooperation with the Environmental Defense Fund during the 2016 election, we conduct the first randomized controlled trials testing whether young people who pledge to vote are more likely to turn out than those who are contacted using standard Get-Out-the-Vote materials. Overall, pledging to vote increased voter turnout by 3.7 points among all subjects and 5.6 points for people who had never voted before. These findings lend support for theories of commitment and have practical implications for mobilization efforts aimed at expanding the electorate.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Female
  • Humans
  • Male
  • Politics*
  • Probability
  • Psychological Theory
  • Random Allocation
  • Young Adult

Grants and funding

Partial funding for the Pennsylvania experiment came from The Pluribus Project (http://www.pluribusproject.org/). The Pluribus Project had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Environmental Defense Fund provided the remaining funds for implementing the experiments and was involved in designing the pledge materials used in the experiments and data collection. The Environmental Defense Fund had no role in data analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. There was no additional external funding received for this study.