Abstract
Despite attempts to mobilize communities of color, gaps in turnout among racial and ethnic minorities persist (e.g., Abrajano et al., J Polit 70:368–382, 2008; Pantoja et al., Polit Res Q 54:729–750, 2001; Kaufmann, Polit Res Q 56:199–210, 2003; Ramirez, Ann Am Acad Pol Soc Sci 601:66–84, 2005, Am Polit Res 35:155–175, 2007). Scholars are only beginning to understand how parties or independent groups seek to mobilize these communities. In this paper, we develop and test the Differential Contact Thesis, which holds that turnout differences between whites and minority groups are influenced both by lower rates of contact by the parties and the use of less effective methods of contact. To test this, we examine data from the 2004 National Annenberg Election Study (NAES), 2004 American National Election Study (ANES), and the 2004 Miami Exit Poll. Our results support the Differential Contact Thesis: even controlling for the initial likelihood to be contacted by the parties, racial and ethnic minorities were less likely to be contacted using the most effective techniques. To some extent, non-partisan contact seems to compensate for the inattention of the major parties toward minority voters, but this contact is less likely to mobilize voters than contact from the parties.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
In 2004, the Census Bureau’s survey shows that 67.2% of non-Hispanic whites voted compared to 60% of African-Americans and roughly 45% of Hispanics and Asians. Of course, African-Americans voted in higher numbers in 2008, seemingly because of enthusiasm for Barack Obama.
Parties may also subcontract their ground operations to “non-party” groups, a point we consider below.
It should also be noted that Verba et al. (1995) find that resources are relatively less important to the voting decision than to decisions to partake in other political activities.
Imai (2005) is critical of Gerber and Green’s (2000a) experimental design and analysis of the efficacy of phone calls. However, his revised estimates do not alter the finding that personal contact is more effective than phone calls, Gerber and Green (2005) dispute the validity of the criticism, and several additional field experiments have confirmed their findings.
Exceptions include Green (2004), Michelson (2003), Ramirez (2005, 2007), and Wong (2005) who examine the impact of modes of mobilization—such as direct mail, live phone calls, and robotic phone calls—on African-Americans, Asian Americans, and Latinos. Their concerns, however, are with the efficacy of these different kinds of contact. We seek to examine the incidence and quality of contact, using their results to inform us of its likely effects.
As shorthand, in the rest of the paper, we refer to non-Hispanic white individuals as “White.”
Two field experiments exploring the efficacy of partisan and non-partisan phone messages suggest statistically insignificant differences (Panagopoulos 2009) or greater effects of non-partisan messages—albeit without comparing their effects in the same experiment (McNulty 2005). We do not dispute such findings; we are suggesting that there is systematic variation in the mode of messages received by ethnic groups from partisan and non-partisan groups that have consequences for turnout.
The ideal data would consist of a large national sample with sufficient numbers of whites and minority groups that had both voted and not voted, and it would ascertain the source of contact and the method used.
For non-partisan contact the 2004 ANES asked whether anyone else called the respondent or came around to talk to him or her, thus ignoring several other possible venues for contact. It also asked only about contact concerning “supporting specific candidates in this last election.” The 2008 ANES had the same question wording. This excludes non-partisan activity, such as via membership of groups and organizations, and encouragement simply to fulfill one’s civic duty by participating in an election, as well as the kind of contact. We do not use the ANES to evaluate kinds of non-partisan activity but later in the paper we employ pooled ANES data to provide a sense of the relative efficacy of partisan and non-partisan contact.
We also provide some analysis of the 2008 election in terms of party contact (see footnote 21) and turnout (see Table 5), using ANES data, to provide additional context. The Obama campaign received considerable attention for its efforts to mobilize minorities and the ANES oversampled Blacks and Latinos. We thank Reviewer #1 for this suggestion.
On the other hand, the increase in turnout was nationwide (Bergan et al. 2005). The fact that the NAES and ANES samples include respondents from several states that did not have meaningful campaigns reduces the relationship between turnout and mobilization.
Unless the Democratic Party in Florida placed greater emphasis on contact from allied organizations such as unions (the Party Mobilization Hypothesis).
For the form of contact, we also examined alternative estimators such as Heckman probit models and Sartori’s (2003) estimator, which also accounts for selection effects but without exclusion restrictions. They are consistent with the logit estimates of the effects of race and ethnicity with one exception—receiving direct mail from a major party in Miami-Dade County—where the logit estimate shows no difference by ethnicity, the Heckman model indicates that Cubans in Miami-Dade are somewhat more likely to receive direct mail, while the Sartori estimator indicates a selection model is inappropriate (and does not show a difference for Cubans). Thus, the implications of the logit model appear sound here as well.
The addition of variables such as whether a respondent’s parents were born in the US, the respondent was born in the US (Miami Exit Poll), and language spoken at home (Miami Exit Poll) were generally statistically insignificant and made little difference to our results. This analysis is available on request.
We exclude the other two categories in the NAES, Asian, and American Indian because, particularly in the post-election interviews, their numbers are too small.
Ideally we could conduct an experiment in which we contacted individuals with partisan and non-partisan messages and then test recall of that contact later.
Shaw et al. (2000) make a similar argument. In addition, they rely on recall of contact 10 months after the election.
It bears repeating that the slight variation in model specifications using NAES data are because the survey did not ask all the same questions over time, e.g., during the period respondents were asked whether they had received help to vote early the survey did not ask about first time voting. Excluding the control for first time voters, in the models where it appears, has a negligible impact on the influence of other variables.
See online Appendix A Table A1 for statistics on contact in the three surveys. Given the variation in questions, we would expect more people to report partisan and non-partisan contact in the ANES than in the NAES and that is what we see.
Standard errors in these and all other tables account for potential area-level commonalities. For the ANES data we cluster by primary sampling unit; with the NAES data clustering is by media market; and for the Miami Exit poll we cluster by precinct location. Alternative area clustering in the ANES and NAES, such as by state or county made little difference.
For similar analysis of the 2008 ANES data, see Appendix A Table A2. Relative to 2004 we see evidence that Hispanic individuals were less disadvantaged compared to whites—the coefficient for Hispanic is negative but statistically insignificant—and that African-Americans were still less likely to be contacted than white individuals. If we focus on party contact from the parties separately the coefficient for Republican contact is negative and statistically significant for African-Americans, while for Democrat contact it is also negative but much smaller and the p-value is .21.
There is contradictory evidence for early voters, with the NAES and ANES data suggesting they were somewhat more likely to have been contacted by a major party to vote early and to vote on election day, and the exit poll data indicating that in Miami they were targeted no more than other voters. It is possible that this is a consequence of NAES and ANES early voters including those voting by absentee ballot, who were not captured in Miami, if they were much more likely to receive communications from both parties.
Estimates using Miami data do not control for whether a respondent voted at the previous election because the question was not asked. Although the models employing NAES and ANES data suggest that this was an important influence on contact and turnout, if we exclude it the key relationships for ethnic group and the efficacy of contact in Tables 1, 3, and 5 change little. We are therefore confident that the results using the Miami data are not an artifact of not being able to account for whether or not a respondent voted at the previous election.
We also examined interaction effects between each group and party identification; none were statistically significant. We then examined the possibility that ethnic groups provided a disproportionate number of first time voters, who were less likely to be contacted in-person. These interactions were also statistically insignificant, except for Cuban first time voters who were less likely than other Cubans to be contacted in person.
The predicted probabilities on which these and all other point estimates are based are displayed in Appendix A Table A3.
Haitians were also more likely to have received this kind of non-partisan contact than Cuban and non-Cuban Hispanics (p < .05) but the difference between African-Americans and non-Cuban Hispanics is not quite statistically significant (p = .16).
In-person contact from groups is more likely than contact in a meeting or congregation, though only marginally for Haitians (see Appendix A Table A3).
We referred to African-Americans but not to Haitians in the Differential Contact Thesis. We were agnostic about other groups—relying on the data to tell us—primarily because there is very little literature on, for example, Haitian political behavior (though see Rogers 2006).
The question about offers of help to vote early was not asked after 10/31/2004. We are therefore unable to gauge their impact on the likelihood that an individual voted.
At the time of writing the 2008 ANES data do not include the requisite codes for a measure of political knowledge. We therefore control for interest in the campaign instead.
This is not true for Hispanics in 2004. Even with control variables the NAES shows Hispanics less likely to vote than African-Americans and whites, whereas the ANES shows no difference. While the bivariate relationship between Hispanic and voting in the ANES is negative and statistically significant, and is also more resistant to the introduction of control variables than the relationship for African-Americans, it disappears with the inclusion of education and income. In addition, African-Americans were more likely to vote, all else equal, despite being less likely to be contacted by a major party (see footnote 21). The Obama campaign seems to have energized African-Americans to vote but not because they were any more likely to be mobilized.
We also looked at potential interaction effects between ethnic group and types of contact and between views on gay marriage and living in a state with a gay marriage measure on the ballot, none of which were statistically significant. And we estimated models with separate variables for Democratic and Republican identifiers and with interactions with contact. We find evidence of a small Republican advantage in propensity to vote, although it was not statistically significant, but no evidence of interaction effects. More importantly, accounting for a potential Republican advantage barely alters the coefficients and standard errors for partisan and non-partisan contact.
We examined differences across groups in the Miami Exit Poll in reports of contact about the election through religious groups or organizations. African-Americans were somewhat more likely to report this kind of contact than Whites (though at p = .10). Haitians were no more or less likely to report contact through religious groups or organizations than any other ethnic group.
To be sure, the Miami Exit Poll interviewed members of non-white ethnic groups who did come to the polls, but this appears to have been in spite rather than because of the mobilization efforts of the major parties.
Indeed, we examined additional models predicting partisan and non-partisan contact using the pooled ANES and NAES data (used in Table 5) by whether an individual was a voter or non-voter and their interaction with Black and Hispanic. In both models, being a voter was associated with contact, as would be expected, but ethnicity did not moderate the relationship.
References
Abrajano, M., Alvarez, R. M., & Nagler, J. (2008). The Hispanic vote in the 2004 presidential election: Insecurity and moral concerns. Journal of Politics, 70, 368–382.
American Political Science Association Task Force on Inequality and American Democracy. (2004). American democracy in an age of rising inequality. Perspectives on Politics, 2, 651–666.
Aoki, A., & Nakanishi, D. (2001). Asian Pacific Americans and the new minority politics. PS: Political Science and Politics, 34, 605–610.
Barreto, M. (2005). Latino immigrants at the polls: Foreign-born voter turnout in the 2002 election. Political Research Quarterly, 58, 79–86.
Barreto, M. (2007). !Si se puede! Latino candidates and the mobilization of Latino voters. American Political Science Review, 191, 425–441.
Barreto, M., & Nuño, S. (forthcoming). The effectiveness of co-ethnic contact on Latino political recruitment. Political Research Quarterly.
Bergan, D., Gerber, A., Green, D., & Panagoulos, C. (2005). Grassroots mobilization and voter turnout in 2004. Public Opinion Quarterly, 69, 760–777.
Bobo, L., & Gilliam, F. (1990). Race, sociopolitical participation, and black empowerment. American Political Science Review, 84, 377–393.
Bowers, J. (2004). Does moving disrupt campaign activity? Political Psychology, 21, 525–543.
Burgess, D., Haney, B., Snyder, M., Sullivan, J., & Transue, J. (2000). Rocking the vote: Using personalized messages to motivate voting among young adults. Public Opinion Quarterly, 64, 29–52.
Calhoun-Brown, A. (1996). African-American churches and political mobilization: The psychological impact of organizational resources. Journal of Politics, 58, 935–953.
Cardy, E. (2005). An experimental field study of the GOTV and persuasion effects of partisan direct mail and phone calls. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 601, 28–40.
Dawson, M. (1995). Behind the mule: Race and class in African-American politics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Dawson, M., Brown, R., & Allen, R. (1990). Racial belief systems, religious guidance, and African-American political participation. National Political Science Review, 2, 22–44.
de la Garza, R., & Abrajano, M. (2002). Get me to the polls on time: Latino mobilization and turnout in the 2000 Election. Paper prepared for presentation at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Boston, MA, September, 2002. http://www.allacademic.com/one/apsa/apsa02. Accessed 28 April 2010.
de La Garza, R., & Abrajano, M. (with Cortina, J.). (2007). Get me to the polls on time: Co-ethnic mobilization and Latino turnout. In J. Junn, & K. Haynie (eds.), New race politics: Understanding minority and immigrant politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
de la Garza, R., & DeSipio, L. (2005). (Eds.). Muted voices: Latinos and the 2000 elections. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
DeLuca, T. (1995). The two faces of political apathy. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
DeSipio, L., & de la Garza, R. (2005). Between symbolism and influence: Latinos and the 2000 election. In R. de la Garza & L. Desipio (Eds.), Muted voices: Latinos and the 2000 elections (pp. 13–60). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
Fiorina, M. (1999). Extreme voices: A dark side of civic engagement. In T. Skocpol & M. Fiorina (Eds.), Civic engagement in American democracy. Washington, DC and New York: Brookings Institution and Russell Sage Foundation.
Gerber, A., & Green, D. (2000a). The effects of canvassing, direct mail, and telephone contact on voter turnout: A field experiment. American Political Science Review, 94, 653–663.
Gerber, A., & Green, D. (2000b). The effect of a nonpartisan get-out-the-vote drive: An experimental study of leafletting. Journal of Politics, 62, 846–857.
Gerber, A., & Green, D. (2005). Correction to Gerber and Green (2000), replication of disputed findings, and reply to Imai. American Political Science Review, 99, 301–313.
Gerber, A., Green, D., & Green, M. (2003a). Partisan mail and voter turnout: Results from randomized field experiments. Electoral Studies, 22, 563–579.
Gerber, A., Green, D., & Larimer, C. (2008). Social pressure and voter turnout: Evidence from a large-scale field experiment. American Political Science Review, 102, 33–48.
Gerber, A., Green, D., & Nickerson, D. (2003b). Getting out the vote in local elections: Results from six door-to-door canvassing experiments. Journal of Politics, 65, 1083–1096.
Green, D. (2004). Mobilizing African-American voters using direct mail and commercial phone banks: A field experiment. Political Research Quarterly, 57, 245–255.
Green, D., & Gerber, A. (2004). Get out the vote: How to increase voter turnout. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press.
Harris, F. (1994). Something within: Religion as a mobilizer of African-American political activism. Journal of Politics, 56, 42–68.
Hill, K. Q., & Leighley, J. (1992). The policy consequences of class bias in state electorates. American Journal of Political Science, 36, 351–365.
Iceland, J., & Weinberg, D. (2002). Racial and ethnic residential segregation in the United States: 1980–2000. Census 2000 Special Report, Washington, DC.
Imai, K. (2005). Do get-out-the-vote calls reduce turnout? The importance of statistical methods for field experiments. American Political Science Review, 99, 283–300.
Institute of Politics, Harvard University. (2006). Campaign for president: The managers look at 2004. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.
Kaufmann, K. M. (2003). Cracks in the rainbow: Group commonality as a basis for Latino and African-American political coalitions. Political Research Quarterly, 56, 199–210.
Leighley, J. (1995). Attitudes, opportunities and incentives: A field essay on political participation. Political Research Quarterly, 48, 181–209.
Leighley, J. (2001). Strength in numbers? The political mobilization of racial and ethnic minorities. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Leighley, J., & Vedlitz, A. (1999). Race, ethnicity, and political participation: Competing models and contrasting explanations. Journal of Politics, 61, 1092–1114.
Mauer, M., & King, R. (2007). Uneven justice: State rates of incarceration by race and ethnicity. Report of the Sentencing Project, Washington, DC.
McNulty, J. (2005). Phone-based GOTV—what’s on the line? Field experiments with varied partisan components, 2002–2003. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 601, 41–65.
Michelson, M. (2003). Getting out the Latino vote: How door-to-door canvassing influences voter turnout in rural central California. Political Behavior, 25, 247–263.
Michelson, M. (2004). Mobilizing the Latino youth vote. CIRCLE Working Paper 10, Boston, MA.
Michelson, M. (2006). Mobilizing the Latino youth vote: Some experimental results. Social Science Quarterly, 87, 1188–1206.
Nickerson, D. (2007). Quality is job one: Professional and volunteer voter mobilization calls. American Journal of Political Science, 51, 269–282.
Panagopoulos, C. (2009). Partisan and nonpartisan message content and voter mobilization: Field experimental evidence. Political Research Quarterly, 62, 70–76.
Pantoja, A., Ramirez, R., & Segura, G. (2001). Citizens by choice, voters by necessity: Patterns in political mobilization by naturalized Latinos. Political Research Quarterly, 54, 729–750.
Putnam, R. (2000). Bowling alone: The collapse and revival of American community. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Ramirez, R. (2005). Giving voice to Latino voters: A field experiment on the effectiveness of a national nonpartisan mobilization effort. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 601, 66–84.
Ramirez, R. (2007). Segmented mobilization: Latino nonpartisan get-out-the-vote efforts in the 2000 general election. American Politics Research, 35, 155–175.
Ramirez, R. (2008). Residential mobility and the political mobilization of Latinos in Houston. In R. Espino, D. Leal, & K. Meier (Eds.), Latino politics: Identity, mobilization, and representation (pp. 90–103). Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press.
Rogers, R. (2006). Afro-Caribbean immigrants and the politics of incorporation: Ethnicity, exception or exit. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Rosenstone, S., & Hansen, J. M. (1993). Mobilization, participation, and democracy in America. New York: Macmillan.
Sartori, A. (2003). An estimator for some binary-outcome selection models without exclusion restrictions. Political Analysis, 11, 111–138.
Shaw, D., de la Garza, R., & Lee, J. (2000). Examining Latino turnout in 1996: A three-state, validated survey approach. American Journal of Political Science, 44, 332–340.
Stokes, A. (2003). Latino group consciousness and political participation. American Politics Research, 31, 361–379.
Uhlaner, C., Cain, B., & Kiewiet, D. R. (1989). Political participation of ethnic minorities in the 1980s. Political Behavior, 11, 195–231.
Verba, S., Schlozman, K., & Brady, H. (1995). Voice and equality: Civic voluntarism in American politics. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Verba, S., Schlozman, K., Brady, H., & Nie, N. (1993). Race, ethnicity and political resources: Participation in the United States. British Journal of Political Science, 23, 453–497.
Wielhouwer, P. (2000). Releasing the fetters: Parties and the mobilization of the African-American electorate. Journal of Politics, 62, 206–222.
Williams, L. F. (2004). The issue of our time: Economic inequality and political power in America. Perspectives on Politics, 2, 683–689.
Wong, J. (2005). Mobilizing Asian American voters: A field experiment. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 601, 102–114.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Electronic supplementary material
Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Stevens, D., Bishin, B.G. Getting Out the Vote: Minority Mobilization in a Presidential Election. Polit Behav 33, 113–138 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11109-010-9128-7
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11109-010-9128-7