Thesis statement: Voter mobilization plays an important role in encouraging people to participate in elections. This paper analyzes how the concept affects voter turnout among the youths.
Introduction
Documented data reveal that young voters do not turn out in large numbers during elections in the US. Older citizens are known for participating fully in elections because of various reasons. Since 1972, research shows that young voters have neglected elections, especially after the voting age was lowered to eighteen years. Voter turnout declined by 49%, 40.8% and 32.4% in 1972, 1984 and 1996 respectively. In the same years, incumbents contesting for presidential posts won by large margins. Low voter turnout among the youths reflects a vicious cycle. The political culture shows that politicians do not court youths during campaigns. As campaigns intensify, young people are never involved in designing strategies. In other words, voter mobilization efforts are less eminent among the youths. Before the upcoming 2012 elections, many organizations have stood out to encourage the youths to turn out in large numbers during presidential elections. The organizations are campus-based, which concern themselves with voter registration drives aiming at motivating the youths to exercise their democratic right of voting. The organizations involve themselves in voter mobilization campaigns among other things.
Campus organizations utilize the services of volunteers in reaching out to voters in various parts of the country. The volunteers contact voters over the phone, which is purely informal compared to other forms of phone contacts made by commercial organizations such as banks. This implies that volunteers have enough time to talk to young voters over elections and campaign issues (Highton and Wolfinger 202). The phone calls aim at informing voters when and where to vote. Sensitization organizations avoid official phone calls because they are ineffective in encouraging voters to participate in elections. In some instances, voter organizations engage the youths in face-to-face conversations. This paper evaluates the effectiveness of phone calls and face-face conversation in encouraging voters to participate in campaigns and elections. The study employs a randomized field experimentation technique. This shows that the names of registered voters were arbitrarily allocated to treatment and control groups. The researcher paid a visit to treatment groups. On other occasions, the researcher simply called the groups due to a lack of time and resources. The control groups were neither contacted nor visited. After elections, the researcher would be aiming at obtaining the records from each region of the country for analysis purposes. The researcher would then calculate turnout rates in each control group as well as the treatment group.
Research Design and Fundamental Statistical Model
As earlier stated, this study employed an experimental design, which manipulates randomly the way voters are approached during campaigns and elections. It does not engage in observational studies, which aim at analyzing voter behavior during campaigns. An experimental method or technique was employed because it eliminates two types of problems associated with observational research. One of the strengths is that the study targets voters who are perceived to vote during elections. The technique takes care of spurious events, which prevents a negative correlation between phone contact and voter turnout. In this regard, a strong or positive correlation could be observed even though GOVT could be weak or ineffective. In case respondents lose their memories regarding whether they were contacted, the study could be termed as vague or even distorted. In this regard, the correlation between phone contact and voter turnout would be misrepresented implying that the true causal influence of the study would not be achieved. The experimental study tries to keep off from this mistake, which is usually a problem in observational studies.
The technique employed in this study has one weakness, which is related to the scope of the study. This means that only citizens allocated to the treatment group can actually be contacted. In this situation, the researcher is faced with the problem of differentiating between the intent-to-treat effect and establishing the effects of real contact. Treatment of effect can be understood as the existing difference in voter turnout between individuals allocated treatment group and those assigned control groups. In case each person in the treatment group is really contacted, the intent-to-treat effect would be the same as the actual treatment effect. It is not lost on us that contact rates must add up to less than 100% in any given study.
Phone Conversation Sites
In any given research, a researcher must identify his/her study population and the place to undertake the study. In this study, the researcher chose to work with college students and their surroundings. At the college, many youths would be studied as compared to other places. This means that the site was selected mainly because of accessibility. The researcher designed a voter mobilization campaign before elections to test whether the youths are ready for the polls. The research was prepared amicably by assembling all needed equipment and apparatus. Before progressing with the study, the researcher informed all participants and relevant bodies in order to avoid conflicts and guarantee reliability and validity. Students were informed through their emails and notice boards since the researcher lacked the resources and time to design official letters. The researcher familiarized himself with the type of questions to be posed to respondents. During the preparation stage, the researcher made some key decisions including the techniques to be employed in recording collected data.
The study took place in two states that is, Albany, New York, and Oregon. The study population included students willing to participate in elections in 2012. Respondents were contacted only during the day in order to guarantee ethics, which is an important aspect of any research study. Contacting students at night would bring about doubts since it could violate the tenets of scientific research. Due to limited time and resources, the researcher only contacted 69% of the targeted 200 students. This means that 31% of the total population was never reached. The researcher never had a problem in contacting respondents meaning that they gave out correct phone numbers. It was established that the two sites have a different voting system. Voters in New York cast their votes using the traditional in-person balloting criteria. In Oregon, voting is conducted through emails. A voter receives his or her ballot in advance and he/she is expected to hand it in during the date of the elections. This difference influences voter turnout.
Statistical Power of Each Phone Canvassing
The accuracy of treatment effects could be denoted in each site depending on certain aspects of the experimental study. In this study, the researcher employed an evaluation technique in checking whether apparent effects are strong enough to reject the null hypothesis. This could mean that the real effect of treatment is zero. This would then imply that observed outcomes came about by chance. In classical research, the null hypothesis would be ruled out in case it has an effect of less than 5%. An experiment is strong in case it is able to detect the effect of a certain enormity. Instinctively, four factors have been proved to affect an experiment. They include a larger sample size, the similarity in size of treatment and control groups, and larger treatment effects. In this study, certain factors seemed to limit the power of every phone contact experiment. Initially, the sample size used was small. The researcher could not assign a registration list to a control group.
Experimental Findings Concerning Phone Canvassing
After the 2012 elections, the researcher intends to obtain voting lists from local clerks. The lists would be merged with names found in the treatment and control groups in the study. This would facilitate the calculation of voter turnout rates. It should be understood that such an attempt could result in misclassification mainly because of a mismatch of names and addresses. In some way, the use of random allocation compares this risk to treatment and control groups. In other words, the existing voter turnout disparity provides the researcher with an approximate experimental treatment effect. It was established that the intent-to-treat effects for New York showed a great difference in turnout between treatment and control groups. Diminutive intent-to-treat effects were also experienced in other parts of the country such as Oregon. In fact, the Oregon site was more victorious in terms of voter mobilization.
In order to evaluate the mobilizing consequence of phone contact, the researcher took into account the fact that several individuals on the local registrar’s list were not contacted either openly or circuitously. This aspect affected the effects of actual contact (Rosenstone and Hansen 67). An influence of real contact was approximated at around 8.2% in Albany. The study shows that extensive voter mobilization and registration at the last minute can have a profound effect on the results of elections. Variations encountered across sites state that some regions conduct powerful campaigns. It could also suggest that electoral laws and voting techniques affect voter participation in campaigns and elections. Of the two researched places, Oregon was the best in terms of voter turnout. Unfortunately, Albany had the best voter mobilization exercise but voter turnout was poor. This could be attributed to traditional voting techniques, which discourage people to participate in elections. Many people would be unwilling to queue for long hours. Overall, experiences with the two sites reveal that youth mobilization is possible. Informing youths about their voting rights reduces the age voting gap that would affect leadership society.
Face-to-face Canvassing Sites
Face to face canvassing is another technique of data collection that the researcher in this study employed. The technique is very efficient though it demands many resources and labor. Phone contact is flexible because the research can monitor the progress of data collection from a central point. The face-to-face study calls for commitment and patience on the side of the researcher. The technique cannot be ignored even though it is time-consuming. It is important because the type of data collected through the technique is reliable. By coming into direct contact with respondents, the researcher can monitor the habits and actions of voters. The technique allows the researcher to interact with the researcher, which increases the possibility of acquiring very important data (Bennett 318).
Through analysis of body movements such as facial expressions, the researcher was able to capture important information that could not be easily collected through phone calls. The researcher distributed notices, requesting registered voters to allocate him/her some time. The study was conducted by assorting a list of streets and blocks into treatment and control groups (Gerber and Green 76). In this case, the unit of analysis was the street. The most important variable, therefore, was the street-level attendance rate. Visiting streets and blocks were preferred in the face-to-face technique as opposed to visiting particular individuals. The streets that the researcher visited became treatment group while the rest were control groups. In this study, the researcher conducted individual-level canvassing in Oregon. This was because the state had an organized voting system.
Survey Analysis
The study employed an innovative methodological technique in evaluating the outcomes of voter mobilization before elections. The study intended to use post-election surveys to assess emotional differences between the treatment group and the control group. The groups could be the same before random assignment but chance variations made a big difference. The researcher depended on surveys for critical information as regards to psychological imprint caused by GOTV campaigns. This came after the realization that both phone contact and face-to-face interaction affect voter turnout. Treatment and control groups could be related to leading models that explain voter mobilization, including internal effectiveness, sense of civic duty, external value, interpersonal trust, curiosity in politics, and the supposed cognitive approaches to the act of voting.
Conclusion
It is noteworthy to observe that mobilization affect turnout during elections. It is however surprising to note that no significant disparities emerge between treatment and control groups. In experimental studies, the differences between the groups are usually neglected because they are very small to affect the outcomes lections.
Works Cited
Bennett, Stephen. “Left behind: Exploring declining turnout among non college young whites,1964-1988”. Social Science Quarterly, 72.2, 1991, 314-333.
Gerber, Alan and Green, Donald. “Do Phone Calls Increase Turnout?” Public Opinion Quarterly, 65.1, 2001, 75-78.
Highton, Benjamin, and Wolfinger, Raymond. “The First Seven Years of the Political Life Cycle”. American Journal of Political Science, 45.1, 2001, 202-209.
Rosenstone, Steven and Hansen, John. Mobilization, Participation, and Democracy in America. New York, NY: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1993.