The Role of Access to Ballots in Gotv Campaigns : Evidence from a Field Experiment

How do ‘Get Out The Vote’ campaigns impact voter turnout? This paper hypothesizes a moderated model whereby distance to polling places is crucial to the linkage between GOTV campaigns and voter turnout. To test this model, we utilized an urban area during the latest local elections in Israel, randomly assigning prospective voters (N=16,005) to a control condition or to receive a GOTV message via direct mail or by phone. Findings show that although both methods increase turnout, GOTV’s effectiveness depends on voters’ distance to the polling place. In comparison to the control and in contrast to the established sense that turnout declines linearly as the distance from polling place increases our findings reveal that both GOTV methods performed best among voters residing 400 to 800 meters away from their polling place a distance which is around the average distance from the polling place (M=715, SD=580)