6.4 Billion American dollars were spent on campaign outreach during the last election (and we don’t know yet how many Rubles were spent). This money was poured out of each political party’s spigots as it has been for every election in recent memory, to pay for nasty TV ads, nasty mailings, nasty robocalls, and earnest, heartfelt door to door solicitation, all in a massive effort to convince voters that the opposing candidate is the absolute nastiest of human beings. Each party regularly spends more than the GDP of several African countries combined in the expectation that they are actually persuading people to take a particular position on “issues.”
But a new study suggests this has all been a colossal waste of money, at least from the standpoint of changing peoples’ minds.
Welcome to a world where opinions never change:
A new paper by two California political scientists finds that the total effect of these efforts is zero, meaning that they have no impact on how voters vote. David Broockman, a Stanford University assistant professor, and Joshua Kalla, a doctoral student at the University of California, Berkeley, analyzed data from 49 field experiments—state, local, and federal campaigns that let political scientists access their data to evaluate their methods. For every flyer stuck in a mailbox, every door knocked by an earnest volunteer, and every candidate message left on an answering machine, there was no measurable change in voting outcomes.
The impact of television advertising on voters’ behavior is also negligible, according to the study’s authors:
Broockman and Kalla also estimated that the effect of television and online ads is zero, although only a small portion of their data speaks directly to that point.
Few researchers have had the opportunity to crunch the numbers from real, actual field data from real, actual campaigns, because political parties are loathe to release such data (particularly if the upshot is that their methods don’t work):
But in many ways, it’s the most important kind of data available. It shows how actual voters and campaigns behave, rather than relying on theoretical surveys. The findings suggest that a lot of the time, energy, and money poured into traditional campaigning methods is wasted, and that the campaign operatives hawking tried-and-true tactics don’t have the evidence to back up their claims. It also casts doubt on the theory of the swing voter who can be persuaded with enough flyers, ad exposure, and conversations with earnest volunteers.
It’s important to note that this study focused on whether voters’ minds can be changed, rather than the effects of such efforts to get out their vote, which the study's authors conclude should be the single most important task for campaigns. It also found voters to be “persuadable” from such tactics in primary elections, in which members of a single political party compete for their attention on the issues, and for ballot initiatives. And there have been historical exceptions (the authors cite a concerted and effective effort by Planned Parenthood to educate voters about Gordon Smith’s anti-choice views ’ during the 2008 Oregon Senate Race). Broockman and Kalla stress they are not saying campaigns are without any effect, simply that their methods need to be re-conceived from the ground up:
To be clear, our argument is not that campaigns, broadly speaking, do not matter. For example, candidates can determine the content of voters’ choices by changing their positions, strategically revealing certain information, and affecting media narratives — dynamics which are outside the scope of our analysis but could be affected by advertising. Campaigns can also effectively stimulate voter turnout. Our argument is not that campaigns do not influence general elections in any way, but that the direct persuasive effects of their voter contact and advertising in general elections are essentially zero.
But the overarching theme is that the American electorate is so polarized that its voters will never be persuaded to change their loyalties, such is the depth of hatred between Democrats and Republicans at this point.
Which really shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone who has witnessed the transformation of American society within the last ten years. We are now a nation permanently wedded to our smartphones, and vast numbers of us, to Facebook, where we (often unconsciously) preconfigure our news feeds and the content that reaches us according to our own existing political biases. We select our friends now based on whether they agree with and reinforce our political views, and we reject alternative viewpoints. For a substantial number of Republicans it does not matter that their Party’s leader is a lecherous, sociopathic con man wholly unfit to hold any elective office. The only thing that matters to them is that he is against abortion, or perhaps that he is not a twisted caricature of a radical feminist eager to emasculate white American males. They are not going to be moved by appeals to reason or logic or “persuasion.” They are motivated primarily by their hatred of Democrats who they see as A) bent on stealing their money to provide “handouts” to people of color or B) baby killers. That’s how Republicans think. Those are really the only things they care about. And Donald Trump is sitting in the White House right now because of Facebook, whether we want to acknowledge that or not.
Similarly, no Democrat is going to vote Republican no matter how many TV ads or mail he or she is bombarded with (although Democrats are at a disadvantage in that their varied constituencies and interests tend to dilute any theme that could unify them, such as abortion rights). There used to be a fantasy about some “mushy middle” of voters who could be persuaded one way or another by such tactics. Nope. No such thing as a swing voter anymore. The only thing that really matters is to get your own people to the polls. Whoever does that the best, wins.
But don’t look for any sea-change in tactics anytime soon. The idea that negative ads and campaign outreach actually accomplish anything is still viewed as Gospel by the political establishment running both parties:
If candidates and leading campaign experts consume and actually agree with these conclusions, it could lead to a massive change how U.S. political campaigns are being run. The effectiveness of TV advertising is basically gospel at this point, and ad-buyers and media consultants are some of the most successful and well-compensated participants in the political process. The idea that their product can't actually persuade people will certainly meet with skepticism and resistance.