While the United States has more democratic elections than any other nation on earth, it is second only to Switzerland in having the lowest attendance record at the polls, said Yale political scientist Donald Green during a recent talk on campus.

Green, the A. Whitney Griswold Professor of Political Science, spoke about elections in general -- and this year's presidential race in particular -- to a group of Silliman College fellows on Oct. 4.

It is a presentation that Green has made to civic organizations throughout the country since the publication of his book "Get Out the Vote!" which he co-authored with Alan Gerber, a professor in Yale's Department of Political Science and Institution for Social and Policy Studies (ISPS). The book, which offers ideas on how to increase

voter turnout, even earned Green invitations to speak at both the Republican and Democratic conventions this summer.

The voter turnout rate for presidential elections, Green told the Silliman audience, is only 54% of those eligible to vote. That figure hasn't changed much since 1972, although it has declined from the 1960s, when it was typically over 60%, he noted.

Turnout for local and national "off year" elections is roughly 25% and 37%, respectively, he added. For special elections, such as for the school board, "there can be more poll watchers than people going to the polls," quipped Green, who is also director of ISPS and professor of psychology.

Green went on to dispel a few popular perceptions about elections. For example, he noted, it is widely believed that level of education directly correlates to voter participation rate -- that is, a better educated population means a higher turnout rate. Not so, says Green, who pointed out that even though the rate of eligible voters in the population who are high school graduates has increased from about 50% in the 1950s to over 80% today, the voting rate has declined.

Similarly, the argument that declining voter turnout reflects increasingly difficult registration procedures is based on a false premise, he argued. "It's actually much easier to register to vote now than it was a generation ago," Green says. Registration closing dates are much closer to the actual election now too, and the option of voting early by mail has become more widespread in many states, he pointed out.

Some social scientists have proposed such "large-scale" solutions to the dismal turnout rate as changing to proportional representation, having fewer elections and getting rid of registration requirements, Green reported.

Green and Gerber wrote their new book, he said, to give concerned citizens, activists, campaign strategists and candidates concrete advice on how to mobilize voters in the most cost-effective way possible.

The book is based on research that Green and his colleagues have conducted over the course of six years. Their research method -- known as "randomized field experimentation" -- is similar to that used by the pharmaceutical industry to test new products, noted Green. The researchers obtained thousands of names of registered voters and assigned them randomly to two groups: a control group and a "treatment" group. In this case, the treatment group was canvassed in a non-partisan get-out-the-vote drive with the full gamut of campaign strategies, from leaflet distribution, direct mail advertising and phone banking to face-to-face contact. After the election, the experimenters could see from the voter turnout rolls how effective each strategy had been. This same "paradigm" was replicated in many cities in many different contexts, explained the professor.

What this experiment revealed, Green said, was that when it comes to mobilizing voters -- and perhaps influencing their vote as well -- "quality matters. The more authentic the interaction, the bigger the effect." In other words, he told the audience, the more personal the contact between the campaigner and the potential voter, the more persuasive the message.

Face-to-face canvassing yields a 7% to 12% advantage and is considered the "gold standard" of campaign strategies, while commercial phone banking, direct mail and anonymous leaflet distribution are far less effective, explained Green. The mass media have not yet been subjected to randomized field experimentation, so there is no scientific assessment of how effective TV and radio ads are, he said.

As for the election on the immediate horizon, Green agreed with most pundits that voter turnout is critical for both Republicans and Democrats. This time, he says, the presidency will be won by the party that "gets out the most people."

-- By Dorie Baker

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