SBA volunteers sent postcards that increased turnout by 1.2% for Ohio’s August 8, 2023, special election. This is a significant effect for a mail campaign.
The election contained a ballot initiative that would have raised the threshold for passing future initiatives from 50% to 60%. A major aim of Republicans for this initiative was to block an effort by Democrats to place a citizen petition for the Ohio Reproductive Freedom Amendment on the November 2023 ballot.
In the summer of 2023, Swing Blue Alliance volunteers wrote 34,970 postcards to Ohio voters, encouraging supporters of reproductive freedom to vote against this Republican-backed constitutional change. Thanks in part to the work of SBA volunteers, the initiative failed.
How can we say that SBA efforts had an impact?
One of SBA’s criteria for deciding where we invest our time and energy is to ensure that the effects are measurable. To ascertain that we met that benchmark in Ohio, our research staff carried out a rigorous analysis of the campaign using a randomized controlled trial of handwritten GOTV (get-out-the-vote) cards.
SBA developed a mailing list of 44,170 registered voters who could not be reached easily by phone or canvassing, had a Democratic support score of 65% or greater, and voted in the last four primary elections. SBA eliminated voters with ambiguous descriptions, creating a pool of 38,654 voters.
From this pool, the research team used a random number generator to designate 3,684 voters as a control group. SBA volunteers wrote postcards to the remaining 34,970 voters.
SBA’s analysis determined that the postcards increased the likelihood of voting by 1.2%. This is noteworthy given that the August 8 election was at an unusual time. Using a message with useful information about the election may well have been a key contributor to getting voters to the polls that day.
The attempt to quash ballot initiatives in August lost by 43% to 57%. Two initiatives in November – to give women the right to make their own reproductive decisions and to legalize recreational use of marijuana – won by the same 57% to 43%. The people’s preferences succeeded thanks to the defeat of the August initiative.
SBA designs its postcard and other campaigns based on evidence-based proof of successful results. The Ohio analysis is a great example of this guideline.
Find the full study report here.
With thanks to Jeanne Duffy, John Loewenstein, Robert Newby, and David Salkever, who carried out this study.