The Virus and the Vote: Promoting Youth Turnout During a Global Pandemic

• In Event: Young Voters

Abstract

Young eligible voters, including college students, are casting decisive votes in American elections and are reshaping the demographic composition of the American electorate. However, in 2020, the COVID-19 global pandemic presented new hurdles and challenges for college student voting such as address changes and residential uncertainty, new procedures for casting ballots absentee, and in some cases, uncertainty and conflicting information about how to vote. Prior research by Holbein and Hillygus shows that young people often intend to vote, but they have a lower rate (compared to older voters) of following through on their intentions. The conditions of the COVID-19 pandemic had the potential to further disrupt and complicate young peoples’ intentions to vote during an unprecedented election cycle. In this study, we test two interventions designed to address the challenges many young people could face in following through on their intentions to vote during the COVID-19 pandemic.

With the disruption of traditional GOTV methods on campus -- such as door to door campaigning and large rallies -- was it possible to stimulate youth voter turnout without direct personal contact? Our pre-registered study uses a randomized field experiment to directly test if students from a large midwestern university are more likely to vote in the 2020 election after receiving a treatment with absentee voting information or a treatment encouraging them to “make a plan” to vote. We randomized students into groups based on address information provided by the university Registrar. Students in the first and second-year cohorts at the university with current or permanent addresses within the midwestern state were randomly assigned to one of five groups approximately one month prior to Election Day: (1) a control group receiving no treatment, (2) an informational treatment group where students received a letter with information about how to register to vote and cast a ballot, (3) an information treatment along with a reminder magnet that makes specific references to the voting process, (4) a “plan” treatment group where students received a letter about how to prepare for the upcoming election, and (5) a plan treatment along with a magnet that provides check boxes that identify each stage of the voting process. Further, an additional intervention detailing potential changes to prior voting plans was randomly assigned to students who received the plan treatments two weeks later to account for the possibility that changing circumstances could have disrupted students’ vote intentions.

Our study examines what types of messages about voting most effectively stimulate youth voter turnout-- informational messages or messages that promote preparation, planning, and implementation. We also assess whether our intervention has a spillover effect among treated students’ household members, as well as whether early voter registration matters for mobilizing voter turnout for the treated students and their household members more. We pair the results of our field experiment with a pre-test and post-test survey of students who were enrolled in our study to unpack the mechanisms behind successful mobilization and spillover to household members. Overall, our study provides an opportunity to systematically assess the efficacy of voter turnout efforts during an unprecedented crisis that enormously disrupted typical GOTV efforts.

Authors

• Rachel Barry, Michigan State University

• Daniel E. Bergan, Michigan State University

• Ana Bracic, Michigan State University

• Dustin Carnahan, Michigan State University

• Nazita Lajevardi, Michigan State University

• Sarah E. Reckhow, Michigan State University

• Kjerstin Thorson, Michigan State University