Mobilizing College Students through Peer-based Voter Registration Reminders

• In Event: Field Experimental Studies of Registration, Turnout, and Vote Choice

Abstract

We present the results of a voter registration experiment conducted with over 10,000 college freshmen living in on-campus housing at a flagship state university. Previous work has demonstrated the limited effectiveness of administrative emails in mobilizing students to register and vote. Given institutional incentives and the low cost of such techniques, email-based strategies remain a common and an attractive method of encouraging student participation. Contrasting a student-focused civic duty message with a purely informational message, we hypothesize that exposure to the civic duty message tailored to the freshman experience will lead to higher rates of registration and voter turnout than an informational message alone. Unlike previous studies, we leverage the random nature of dorm floor assignments, student Resident Assistants, and a fully online statewide voter registration system in our experiment, limiting subjects' exposure to the administrative nature of the mobilization effort. Additionally, both state and national voterfile data is used to examine the behavior of participants during the entire election season.

Authors

• Nina Kathleen Wornhoff, Deck Apps

• Katherine Hitchcock, Indiana University

• Bernard L. Fraga, Indiana University