Door-to-door canvassing in the European elections: Evidence from a Swedish field experiment

Abstract

In this paper I report the results from a door-to-door canvassing experiment conducted in Sweden during the 2014 European elections. The canvassing was performed by members of the Social Democratic Party and the experiment closely resembles the partisan nature of most mobilizing campaigns in Europe. The paper is one of the first to provide causal evidence for the mobilizing effectiveness of canvassing outside the United States. Living in a household that was visited by canvassers increases the probability of voting by 3.6 percentage points. This effect is entirely driven by estimates twice as large for occasional and first-time voters. Compared to previous research, the high compliance rate gives precisely estimated effects that are closer to average treatment effects. * I am grateful to the two anonymous reviewers, Rafael Ahlskog, Elin Bjarnegård and John Ternovski for their helpful comments and to Peter Gerlach, Carl Kangas, Ingela Nilsson and Fredrik Olovsson at the Social Democratic party for their cooperation. I would also like to direct a special thanks to Nicklas Vinthagen for excellent research assistance and to all the canvassers for their hard work. † Contact details and supplementary information can be found at www.parnyman.com.

Growing into Voting : Election Turnout among Young People and Habit Formation

“…It should, however, be noted that most of these field experiments have been conducted in the US. Experiments with door-to-door canvassing in Europe have had little or no effect (Bhatti et al 2016;Nyman 2017). Other experiments have been more in line with results from the US.…”

Is Door-to-Door Canvassing Effective in Europe? Evidence from a Meta-study across Six European Countries

“…11 John and Brannan 2008. 12 Cantoni and Pons 2016;Foos and John 2016;Nyman 2014;Pons and Liegey 2016;Ramiro, Morales, and Jiménez-Buedo 2012. 13 Karp, Banducci, andBowler 2007. 14 Ramiro, Morales, andJiménez-Buedo 2012.…”

Is it worth door-knocking? Evidence from a United Kingdom-based Get Out The Vote (GOTV) field experiment on the effect of party leaflets and canvass visits on voter turnout

“…In the United Kingdom, beyond a handful (Foos and John 2016;Foos and de Rooij 2017), existing GOTV experiments have focused on non-partisan interventions (e.g., John and Brannan 2008;Fieldhouse et al 2013). An experiment in Sweden found that party canvassing increases turnout by 3.6 percentage points (Nyman 2017), while Cantoni and Pons (2016) find an effect size of around 2 percentage points in France. Meanwhile, experiments that randomize party contact at the aggregate level often show null effects (Ramiro, Morales and Jiménez-Buedo 2012;Pons and Liegey 2018;Pons 2018).…”

“…However, it would be wise to treat this effect as a potential outlier. Indeed, given the size, and with so few other European experiments testing the impact of party leaflets (studies so far have tested canvassing, for example, Ramiro, Morales and Jiménez-Buedo 2012; Pons and Liegey 2018;Bhatti et al 2016;Cantoni and Pons 2016;Pons 2018;Nyman 2017, or phone calls, e.g., Foos and de Rooij 2017), replication and further research into the effects of different designs and types of leaflets is merited.…”