Impact voter mobilisation could be larger

Local governments spend thousands of euros on activities to entice people to vote, but some of the money is spent on activities that are unlikely to have much impact. In order to achieve better results, governments should collaborate with volunteer organisations.

Further, it would make sense to send young people a text message reminding them of the election and to give people who have voted a small sticker, following the example of American ‘I voted’-stickers.

These are the conclusions of a survey of the get out the vote activities of 22 local governments (pdf) prior to the 2006 local election. The survey was conducted by News from Amsterdam and DOUNYA

The local governments that have participated in the study had a voter mobilisation budget ranging from 5,000 to over 200,000 euro. If specific groups were targeted at all, the focus was mostly on youth. Some local governments collaborated with schools and community centres. Collaboration with immigrants’ organisations was rare.

Some local governments spend a large share of their budget on print and other media, whereas it is doubtful whether this will have much of an impact on turnout. An approach in which people are personally invited to vote is much more likely to be effective.

Nationally, turnout in the 2006 municipal election was on average 0.9 percentage point higher than in 2002. In the 22 local governments that participated in this study, turnout rose by 3.9 percentage point on average. Get out the vote activities may well have contributed to the raise in turnout at some locations.

A follow-up study will look into the plans of local governments to raise turnout in the 3 March 2010 local elections.