The takeaways

• Classic turnout letters worked to boost voting, but issue-focused letters fell short

The backstory

At Vote Forward, we’re excited not only about big election years like 2020 (and this year!), but also the in-between years such as 2023. So-called “off years” are great opportunities to engage voters in important state- or local-level elections, and also to test out novel ideas on a smaller scale. That’s why we’ve conducted turnout-boosting letter campaigns, as well as research experiments, in Virginia’s statewide elections for the last three cycles.

In 2023, we conducted both Social and Political handwritten letter campaigns in Virginia ahead of the November elections. Our Social letters were aimed at younger voters (35 and under), who typically vote at a lower rate than their older counterparts, while our Political letters went to Democratic-leaning voters in key districts chosen by our affiliate Swing Left. In both campaigns, many voters received “classic” Vote Forward letters that resembled the kinds of turnout letters we’ve shown to be effective at boosting turnout for six years and counting. Separately, a randomly chosen group of younger voters were selected to receive “issue-focused” letters instead. Each of these letters was focused on one particular issue - gun violence prevention, abortion access, or climate - and we provided special guidance for letter writers to craft stories that focused on these issues. We designed our experiments to measure the impact of the “classic” and the “issue-focused” letters compared to control groups, and also compared to each other.

Surprisingly, the letter design turned out to have a big impact on the results. “Classic” letters performed well in both the Social and Political campaigns, showing +0.5 and +0.9 points of impact on voter turnout, respectively. (For background on how we design experiments and measure impact, check out our Research FAQs.) However, none of the issue-focused letters appeared to show measurable impact relative to controls. This was pretty surprising to us, given that the issue-focused letters looked very similar to the “classic” letters overall. In 2022, we had observed mixed evidence for issue-focused letters compared to “classic” letters, but in 2023 the results clearly indicated that “classic” letters were much less effective, even for the same kinds of voters.

While we’re happy to find that once again “classic” turnout letters helped mobilize voters in Virginia (and in fact, the impact in 2023 was larger than what we measured in Virginia in 2021), we don’t know why the issue-focused letters failed to live up to their promise. One potential explanation is that letter writers might create more effective messages when they have the freedom to write about any topic that matters to them, rather than being constrained to one issue that Vote Forward chooses. Regardless, we think it’s important to remember that research results that don’t work the way we hoped provide useful information, just as much as a positive result. When we learn that something doesn’t work well, we can refocus our attention on what does work. In 2024, our turnout letters build on the legacy of the “classic” letters that showed solid impact in Virginia and many other places for years, as well as what we’ve learned from other experimental research campaigns. You can explore our available letter writing campaigns and adopt voters now on our Campaigns page.