2017 and 2018 Experiments
The original experiments that started it all
The Takeaway:
Handwritten letters from regular people can motivate voters to turn out!
The Backstory:
Experimentation isn’t just something we do for fun - it’s part of our DNA. In fact, Vote Forward’s very first campaign was a randomized experiment. Our founder, Scott Forman, had learned about the power of behavioral interventions and experimentation in his work at Opower, which had shown that a light “nudge” delivered through a mailer could encourage people to reduce their energy bills. Could a similar nudge encourage people to turn out to vote? In 2017, as Alabama faced a special election for U.S. Senator between Doug Jones and Roy Moore, he decided to give it a try.
In this initial trial, Scott sent partially handwritten letters to 1,000 registered likely Democratic voters in Alabama. Though small, this trial showed big impact: compared to the roughly 6,000 voters in the control group, the voters who received letters voted at a rate that was an estimated 3.4 percentage points higher. This number may not seem that large, but in the world of elections, three points is big enough to matter. To provide some context, in that Alabama election, the Democratic candidate Jones ultimately defeated his Republican opponent by 1.7 percentage points.
With that exciting result, Vote Forward was born. Scott and friends tested handwritten letters once again the next year, during a special election in Ohio’s 12th congressional district. This trial found a smaller estimated impact of 1.4 percentage points among the 4,500 voters who received letters - just shy of statistical significance, but still big enough to be meaningful. In that election, the race hung in the balance for weeks as ballots were counted, and the ultimate margin of victory was less than one percentage point. Vote Forward had shown twice that volunteers writing letters from home could have impact at a scale that really matters.
Since then, we’ve run many more experiments, and developed a system to help volunteers write letters to millions more voters. But even as we’ve grown, the values that underpinned those first two trials still shape Vote Forward’s approach to campaigns: an emphasis on rigorous evidence, a belief in the power of passionate grassroots volunteers, and a commitment to keep learning and improving.
You can be part of our experimental program! To be notified about opportunities to write letters in our Labs campaigns, log in to your Vote Forward account profile and select “Labs Mailing List”.
