Relational campaigning

Lennard Metson

2024-12-11

Presentation outline


1. ⚛️ Defining relational campaigning

2. 📚 Academic work & research in the UK

3. 🧪 Results: petition sharing RCT

4. 📋 Exploratory results: survey

5. 🔜 Next steps

Presentation outline


1. ⚛️ Defining relational campaigning

2. 📚 Academic work & research in the UK

3. 🧪 Results: petition sharing RCT

4. 📋 Exploratory results: survey

5. 🔜 Next steps

⚛️ Defining relational campaigning

⚛️ Defining relational campaigning

⚛️ Defining relational campaigning

⚛️ Why relational? Effectiveness

  • Easy for campaigns to contact supporters; easy for supporters to contact friends; but hard for campaigns to contact supporters’ friends
  • Social connections more trusted than the campaign representatives → the contact is potentially more effective

⚛️ Why relational? Scale

  • Supporters can contact multiple voters they know at once without additional effort from the campaign

⚛️ Why relational? Scale

  • Supporters can contact multiple voters they know at once without additional effort from the campaign
  • Voters contacted by the suspporter might contact people they know → potential cascades

Presentation outline


1. ⚛️ Defining relational campaigning

2. 📚 Academic work & research in the UK

3. 🧪 Results: petition sharing RCT

4. 📋 Exploratory results: survey

5. 🔜 Next steps

📚 Relational campaigning in academic research

the most influential canvassers are the rest of the people in the voter’s family […] if party workers or civic organizations want the greatest return on the use of their scarce services, they should make contact with the most politicized member of a household […] and motivate that member to bring all the other members to the polls

📚 Research in the UK

  • Studies in the UK find that when you mobilise voters, you also mobilise their (uncontacted) housemates (like in 🇺🇸) and (uncontacted) neighbours (unlike in 🇺🇸) (Foos and Rooij 2017; Foos et al. 2021)
  • This shows the effect of GOTV contact “spills over” to social connections

📚 Research in the UK

  • Studies in the UK find that when you mobilise voters, you also mobilise their (uncontacted) housemates (like in 🇺🇸) and (uncontacted) neighbours (unlike in 🇺🇸) (Foos and Rooij 2017; Foos et al. 2021).
  • This shows the effect of GOTV efforts “spillsover” to social connections

📚 Research in the UK

Mechanisms:

  1. demonstration: contacted voters vote, connections see them vote which acts as a reminder
  2. recommendation: contacted voters explictly ask their connections to vote

Presentation outline


1. ⚛️ Defining relational campaigning

2. 📚 Academic work & research in the UK

3. 🧪 Results: petition sharing RCT

4. 📋 Exploratory results: survey

5. 🔜 Next steps

🧪 Relational petition recruitment

🧪 Relational petition recruitment

🧪 Relational petition recruitment

🧪 Relational petition recruitment: Who recruited?

🧪 Relational petition recruitment: Who recruited?

🧪 Why don’t (most) supporters recruit?

🧪 Why don’t (most) supporters recruit?

  • Supporters don’t attempt to recruit others (first-stage failure)
  • Supporters’ attempts to recruit others fail (second-stage failure)

🧪 Why don’t (most) supporters recruit?

  • Supporters don’t attempt to recruit others (first-stage failure)
  • Supporters’ attempts to recruit others fail (second-stage failure)

🧪 Why don’t (most) supporters recruit? First-stage

🧪 Why don’t (most) supporters recruit? First-stage

Why focus on the first-stage?

Explainations for first-stage failure: supporters…
  • …underestimate their ability to get others to do things (Flynn and Lake 2008)
  • …feel embarassed about talking about politics with their connections (Gerber et al. 2012)
  • …aren’t motivated enough to ask others to engage in political action

Presentation outline


1. ⚛️ Defining relational campaigning

2. 📚 Academic work & research in the UK

3. 🧪 Results: petition sharing RCT

4. 📋 Exploratory results: survey

5. 🔜 Next steps

📋 What do people ask others to do?

📋 What do people ask others to do?

📋 What do people ask others to do?

📋 Who asks? Random forest models

Which individual-level characteristics predict asking?

📋 Who asks? Random forest models

Which individual-level characteristics predict asking?

📋 Who asks? Political attention

📋 Who asks? Political attention

📋 Who asks? Age

📋 Who asks? Age

📋 Who asks? Party

📋 Who asks? Party

Presentation outline


1. ⚛️ Defining relational campaigning

2. 📚 Academic work & research in the UK

3. 🧪 Results: petition sharing RCT

4. 📋 Exploratory results: survey

5. 🔜 Next steps

🔜 Next steps

  • Further descriptive research on what types of supporter attempt to influence their connections and why

  • Further experiments with partner organisations to test…

    • …different messaging that targets individuals who usually don’t share, to mobilise the first stage
    • …relational campaigning with different target behaviours (vote choice; turnout; etc)

🔜 Next steps

  • We would love to hear…
    • …your thoughts, ideas and experiences with relational campaigning
    • …what research could help your work!

References

Berelson, Bernard, Paul F. Lazarsfeld, and William N. McPhee. 1954. “Voting: A Study of Opinion Formation in a Presidential Campaign,” January. https://doi.org/10.2307/1247297.
Flynn, Francis J., and Vanessa K. B. Lake. 2008. “If You Need Help, Just Ask: Underestimating Compliance with Direct Requests for Help.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 95 (1): 128–43. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.95.1.128.
Foos, Florian, Peter John, Christian Müller, and Kevin Cunningham. 2021. “Social Mobilization in Partisan Spaces.” The Journal of Politics 83 (3): 1190–97. https://doi.org/10.1086/710970.
Foos, Florian, and Eline A. de Rooij. 2017. “All in the Family: Partisan Disagreement and Electoral Mobilization in Intimate Networks - a Spillover Experiment.” American Journal of Political Science 61 (2): 289–304. https://doi.org/10.1111/ajps.12270.
Gerber, Gregory A. Huber, David Doherty, and Conor M. Dowling. 2012. “Disagreement and the Avoidance of Political Discussion: Aggregate Relationships and Differences Across Personality Traits:” American Journal of Political Science 56 (4): 849–74. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-5907.2011.00571.x.
Glaser, William A. 1959. “The Family and Voting Turnout.” Public Opinion Quarterly 23 (4): 563. https://doi.org/10.1086/266911.
Huckfeldt, Robert, and John Sprague. 1987. “Networks in Context: The Social Flow of Political Information.” American Political Science Review 81 (4): 1197–1216. https://doi.org/10.2307/1962585.
Nickerson, David W. 2008. “Is Voting Contagious? Evidence from Two Field Experiments.” American Political Science Review 102 (1): 49–57. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0003055408080039.
Schein, Aaron, Keyon Vafa, Dhanya Sridhar, Victor Veitch, Jeffrey Quinn, James Moffet, David M. Blei, and Donald P. Green. 2021. “Assessing the Effects of Friend-to-Friend Texting on Turnout in the 2018 US Midterm Elections.” In Proceedings of the Web Conference 2021, 2025–36. Ljubljana Slovenia: ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/3442381.3449800.

Appendix

How to read these plots

🤔 Questions? Suggestions? 📧 l.m.metson@lse.ac.uk 🌐 lenmetson.com
ℹ️ The results presented are preliminary, please do not cite without further permission. CC BY-NC-ND.