The campaigning science of micro-targeting voters

>>> tell me what your expectation is? first, walk me through, now that this data is built up, the id is done. most of the persuasion, which is what you have written about, how do you find possible, movable votes? how do you make sure that someone gets out to vote? there's an amazing thing that people on the internet had mixed feelings, the pledge the obama campaign had of people taking photos of themselves pledging to vote. that was rooted in experimental results about what is the best way to make sure people turn up to vote?

>> it's a version of something we know from experiments that started a decade ago. if you get somebody to fill out a pledge card and remind them of a commitment they have made, they are more likely to follow through on it. this is out of the behavioral sciences . one of the things people translated from psych journals into campaigns saying can we have this to motivate people to vote? one of the most successful tools, get them to fill out a card and you send them back a card with their handwriting on it immediately before the election with their reminder.

>> we know where you live in a kind of menacing kidnapper scrawl. you had a question?

>> yeah. i want to ask sasha, the democrats took this up more enthusiastically than the republicans. do you think it's a mistake on the republicans part or a matter of circumstances where they are less diverse and maybe microtargeting isn't as essential there?

>> i think that historically democrats have invested more in field and in-person voter contact generally because they have underperforming parts of the their coalition, minorities, underprivileged people. what happened between 2000 and 2004 was the bush team took seriously the need to identify and engage under what they thought were underperforming parts of their coalition. they have this interest in making serious investments in field and geo tv at the rnc and bush campaign in 2004 . democratic voters are in more democratic precincts. republicans, you know, you can't do that. so, you go to a precinct in idaho, you have to drive 20 minutes between houses. there's not the same volunteer activity.

>> i thought a segway was going to reinvent republican campaigning.

>> direct mail . one of the things we saw in 2004 was an invisible bush campaign . we never saw their organizers but they manage to do well in florida. has there been any data or studies about the effectiveness of mail versus door-to-door operations?

>> yeah. a lot of the get out the vote tools are delivered over mail. that's one way that for a lot of psychological interventions you can give people information in a highly targeted way. one of the things is use of social pressure . behavioral science . if you let people know whether or not the vote is public, it's on file, their neighbors can know and judge them, is really effective. the way you can deliver that message is send a letter saying here is your vote history. here is your neighbor's vote history.

>> that, i think, in the gerber and green stuff , it's most effective in terms of driving turnout. sketch out for us what is happening right now. what is tuesday going to look like if you could sketch for us for the people who aren't going to be on the ground in swing states , what the turnout operation looked like.

>> yeah. obviously, early vote changed the rhythm of this. you have states where tuesday is going to be a relatively small share of the electorate. it does not look a lot different from the saturdays and sundays where the campaigns tried to do a full flush of targets. there's a widowing process. the campaign pushes out, you know, a year and a half ago trying to figure out people who are going to vote for them. push them aside. you have the people who are going to vote and persuade. the people who are left tend to be, you know, low to mid propensity voters. the campaign assessing a 35% to 55% chance of voting in the microtargeting scores. what's really changed is a lot of the -- it used to be the campaigns went out to mobilize people trying to give them more political information. if you are the obama campaign or dukakis campaign you say i'm going to talk to you about issues you should vote for. the campaigns have a clearer idea, the goal is not to change an opinion or intensify it but modify behavior. it's what we'll see on tuesday.

>> i want to thank sasha, author of "the victory lab" for joining us this morning. appreciate it.

>> thanks for having me.

>> thanks to citizens united they have spent massive money in the campaign. rtune. nobody said