How Low Turnout Is Turned Around: International Best Practice in Voter Turnout Campaigns

This report offers practical strategies for increasing voter participation, drawn from behavioural theories, successes, and insights from experiences in a range of cultures, contexts, and political milieu. Although, as stated here, lessons "should always be highly localised", experiences and lessons learned from elections in Australia, Canada, the European Union, India, New Zealand, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, and the United States are used to formulate recommendations intended for electoral commissions and other non-partisan groups responsible for encouraging voter turnout.

The report describes the strategies in terms of four interrelated elements, suggesting that it can be possible to improve voter turnout by:

• Using data from past and current research to inform campaign design;
• Segmenting and prioritising voting populations for targeted campaign messages;
• Determining campaign messages and channels for their delivery based on data and target voting groups; and
• Reviewing and evaluating feedback constantly during the campaign to inform adjustments for strengthening the campaign’s reach and/or effectiveness.

Both quantitative and qualitative data are important in planning and implementing successful strategies; the report suggests that investigating citizens’ values and attitudes is generally most useful but also describes conditions under which demographic data can be powerful in defining and prioritising voting audiences and barriers to voting. For example, distinguishing between those who don’t vote because they feel their vote doesn’t matter, and those who don’t vote because it’s inconvenient in some way allows “get out the vote” efforts to deliver targeted messages to specific audiences, addressing each group’s unique concerns. Successful campaigns use multiple approaches to test messages (copy testing, focus group discussions, digitally supported testing looking at multiple factors) before and during implementation. Using "digital enables campaigns to simultaneously gather deeper insights about audiences and engage with them," offering more targeted messages that meet voters where they are, while social media and digital engagement tools such as webinars support disseminating data and best practices. The report offers specific examples of successes achieved in these various ways.

According to the report, data can inform selection of communication strategies that can:

• Repeatedly and effectively communicate a central theme that speaks to a wide range of voters but can be adjusted to various specific segments.
• Communicate multiple issues-based themes that appeal to various audiences; for example, as described in the report, a 2011 election in the United Arab Emirates, conducted in the context of Arab Spring, was characterised by messages to the electorate that focused on collective growth and development, obligations rather than rights, and national pride with a sense of purpose.
• Cultivate a sense of community with voting as a social norm.
• Use "commitment mechanisms” by which citizens make a public pledge to vote to strengthen voter identity; for example, the Obama campaign for President of the United States had voters sign "commit to vote" forms and then followed up with those voters to encourage them to keep their pledges.

As recommended in the report, using data to prioritise audiences and design a media channel mix that includes broadcast, social, and digital media, as well as traditional print media where appropriate, can contribute to maximising reach, effectiveness, and efficiency (i.e., return on investment).

The final section describes the importance of making constant adjustments to the campaign based on real-time data on measurable metrics gathered from quantitative surveys, focus groups, and social media monitoring. Post-campaign reviews provide essential data and lessons learned for future campaigns. Of particular importance is data on attitudes strongly correlated to actual voting behaviours.