Revisiting Local Campaign Effects: An Experiment Involving Literature Mail Drops in the 2007 Ontario Election

Abstract

Abstract. An invariant feature of constituency election campaigns is the literature mail drop, usually a one-page leaflet or card left at the door profiling the candidate and appealing for electoral support. In this article, we report on a field experiment designed to assess the effects of such mail drops. The experiment was conducted during the 2007 Ontario provincial election campaign in the constituency of Cambridge and entailed distributing literature for the Green party candidate in that constituency. After randomly assigning constituency polls to treatment and control groups, and delivering the Green candidate's partisan literature only to the selected treatment group polls, we compared the candidate's support levels in the treated polls with those in the control group. Our research detected a modest effect associated with the literature drop. The effect was largely limited to constituency neighbourhoods fitting at least part of the Green party's traditional demographic, that is, those with higher than average socio-economic status.Résumé. Un trait commun des campagnes électorales au niveau des circonscriptions est la distribution de publipostages. Il s'agit habituellement d'un dépliant d'une page déposé dans la boîte aux lettres et donnant le profil du candidat tout en invitant les gens à voter pour lui. Notre article porte sur une expérience que nous avons menée pour évaluer les effets de ces publipostages sur le vote. Au cours de la campagne des élections provinciales de l'Ontario, en 2007, dans la circonscription de Cambridge. nous avons distribué des documents sur le candidat du Parti vert de cette circonscription. Les bureaux de scrutin ont étés divisés, au hasard, en deux groupes, soit un groupe de traitement et un groupe de contrôle. Nous avons distribué les documents seulement aux électeurs du premier groupe. Après l'élection, nous avons comparé les niveaux d'appui au candidat vert dans les deux groupes. Les résultats montrent un effet modeste associé à la distribution des publipostages. L'effet observé était en grande partie limité aux quartiers répondant, en partie du moins, au profil démographique traditionnellement favorable aux partis écologiques, soit les quartiers ayant un statut socio-économique plus élevé que la moyenne.

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