Ted Cruz created a firestorm in the days leading up to the Iowa caucuses when he sent out a letter meant to encourage people to go vote. He used a tactic called “social pressure” by some and “shaming” by others. It’s also a tactic that derived from research about what motivates people to go the polls. Despite the negative press, it appears to have worked for Cruz.
For years, consultants like me used to try to scare people into the polls with limited success. We would tell them that if they didn’t go vote, bad things would happen because people who didn’t have their interests at heart would get elected. We had nothing to show that it worked but we didn’t have research on what did.
Then, about 10 years or so ago, researchers decided to start testing what worked and what didn’t. Instead, of scaring people into the polls, research showed that people wanted to be part of the crowd—or at least didn’t want to be pointed out as being outside of a social norm.
The researchers sent people copies of their voting histories showing that they had not voted while their neighbors had. The mailings increased participation significantly. In contrast, messages that tried to goad people by other methods proved ineffective.
So, political strategists started employing social pressure in their get-out-the-vote programs. They would send official-looking letters that say something like, “Our records indicate that you haven’t voted in recent elections.” Included were often a list of people who lived near them who did vote and the message would encourage them to join their friends and family at the polls.
While the strategy continues to work, it also frequently comes with criticism like Cruz got. Even though voting records and histories are public record, the letters have a big brother feel to them. People complain to boards of elections and reporters frequently write about the outrage.
After a handful of stories, critics of the tactic often claim that it backfired and that people actually were deterred from voting. However, no data to date has shown they are right. The letters go out to tens of thousands of people. The complaints come from a few dozen or so people. The people who actually respond the social pressure or shaming probably don’t read newspapers or watch much local news so they’re most likely oblivious to the controversy. They just get to the polls so they don’t get a letter like that in the future.
Candidates like Cruz are using research tested techniques. If they can stand the scrutiny and criticism from the press and more informed electorate, they’re probably making the right decision. However, weathering a negative media storm in the final days of a campaign is certainly no fun while it’s happening and should be part of the calculation before using social pressure mailings.
Thomas Mills is the founder and publisher of PoliticsNC.com. Before beginning PoliticsNC, Thomas spent twenty years as a political and public affairs consultant. Learn more >
People have been underestimating Cruz for a long time. There was no way he could win the Republican primary in Texas over Lt. Gov Dewhurst who had his party’s strong backing and all the “best” endorsements – including Governor Perry. But Cruz won by 13 points.
Yes he has backing from the evangelicals. But with Paul out of the race, he’ll pick up the Libertarian wing too, whose demise has been greatly exaggerated. The fact that he may be the most hated senator by his own party in Washington has become an asset in the current political climate.
PPP has Cruz beating Clinton by 3 and Sanders by 5 in NC – a larger spread than the current Repub leader Trump. And on the debate stage against Clinton or Sanders, he would be a formidable opponent.
Most of the science about what makes people do and think what they do pretty much was generated by spy agencies fighting the Cold War. I think the Russians were better at the actual business of spying because they kept it simplest. The US was looking for a mythical single button solution that would always win and found that assassination was pretty much that. Meantime they just drove people crazy. After awhile they were driving them crazy up in Montreal to get away from the law.
Money, Ideology, Compromise, and Ego (MICE) is the KGB set of levers. I added Spontaneous Affection when I threw the I Ching around this question of what made people do what they do.
Whomever controls what is seen on the TV wins far as I am concerned. It would be funny if it wasn’t.
There are the Elite influencers, authorities, and experts who I think work wonders with Democrats who have delicate egos and ideologies they are afraid of admitting to. They really need to have someone like Howard Dean tell them how great Hillary Clinton is. They really want to be elite, and approved of by the elites.
There does seem to be a lost generation or even two from people I run into between 30 and 50 who look down on people who care, try, or vote at all.
Things have gotten so bad that old hippies who were hiding out and dying but are aware of how bad it was, and how all that was won, little that is was, is being corroded or festered in the places they escaped are showing up.
Lot of ignorance used to being told what to do by authority figures and preachers are supporting people like Trump or Cruz or Rubio.
People who are insecure really need God to love them, since they aren’t sure about either their parents or their friends. “Just do it because it is the right thing to do.” works pretty well with people who are ill equipped to think about any of it critically, hence the rise of someone like Cruz.
Trump says he has all his own money, and his voters want to be like him. He can tell people what to do because he has the money.
Sanders says, “You gave me your money, and I want to get you your money so you can get ahead too.” Who of us wanted to be like Ghandi, and who wants to be like Sanders?
And Hillary? If it wasn’t for the thought leaders, or “Pragmatist” who I don’t think even William James would want to be associated with on “their” terms, Hillary wouldn’t have much other than gender politics to go on. Nobody really believes her. This harping she goes on about about how much she has gotten done, doesn’t hold water if you really think about it. She did no better than Bush when it came to Libya and the aftermath of that, which was something she did get done, now seen objectively as a major disaster regardless of Benghazi.
Ask yourself how you’d feel towards a request from Goldman Sachs if they had given you a quarter of a million dollars for a speech, and she got 650 thousand from them? You’re own common sense, would say to you you’d at least let them into the Oval Office for a chat, now wouldn’t it? Sure will need a lot of thought leaders, and repetition, and saying stuff like, “That’s unfair, below the belt, a smear, for you to tell me I am swayed by money! How dare you! Stop it! I won’t hear it!”
If Bernie Sanders doesn’t get Elizabeth Warren to run with him right now, he won’t beat her because he is nice to women out of habit, same as he was with the women of Black Lives Matter that he let have the stage.
Electing Ted Cruz would be more than adequate punishment for people who don’t vote. The rest of us would be “collateral damage.”
I am one of the voters who received both a letter and a post card from the state Democratic party using this technique in the fall of 2013. I am still ticked off. (1) I had moved to NC only a few months prior to this AND I had voted in the only NC election held during that time. (2) I have voted in every local, state and national election since I was old enough to do so. I may be in the minority who reacted this way, but I will never donate to the NC State Democratic Party, answer any of their mail, be on their email list, nor do anything to respond or help them in any way. Insulted is an understatement.