Thought I’d pass along a revealing new study by political scientists Melissa Michaelson, Lisa Garcia Bedolla and Donald Green on the factors associated with increasing voter turnout among low-income and new immigrant populations. The study is part of a larger initiative by the James Irvine foundation to increase voter turnout among underrepresented groups.

The authors found that personally contacting Latino voters was significantly more effective in increasing turnout than mailings or using pre-recorded phone calls. The study in a nutshell from a new America media article:

Using a control group that received no contact from outreach workers, researchers looked at voter turnout in the June 2006 election and found that the voters who had been contacted by volunteers were more likely to go to the polls on Election Day. Researchers identified the same trend in the 2008 primary election in California.

Here are the best practices culled from the study:

1. recruiting canvassers: stay close to home. Canvassers should ideally be drawn from the local community, either residents of the same neighborhood or representatives of a local organization or religious institution. Canvassers who are personally known to targeted voters are particularly effective at increasing turnout.
2. Canvasser training: get comfortable with the conversation. Good canvassing practices can enhance the effectiveness of a campaign. Groups that train to increase canvasser comfort with the script seem to be most effective in their outreach efforts. This training helps ensure interactions between canvassers and voters are conversational as well as informative.
3. Campaign timing: work the inal four weeks. Going to the ield too early can decrease a campaign’s effectiveness. Canvassing should not begin more than four weeks before Election Day.
4. door-to-door approach: personal contacts work best. Campaigns should ideally use face-to-face canvassing, although phone banks can be preferable for turning out widely dispersed or multilingual populations.
5. live phone banking: pre-screen, personalize and follow up. Phone bank calling is enhanced by pre-screening lists for working numbers (this increases eficiency and helps maintain canvasser morale) and by making follow-up calls to those who earlier expressed an intention to vote. While many communities can be targeted by English-speaking or bilingual English-Spanish speakers, effective phone bank calling in most Asian American communities requires a multilingual approach. The study found that turnout increased if the person making the contact knew the canvasser and if the contact was within four weeks of the election.

While this study provides great insight into increasing turnout, my hope is that we begin to pay equal attention to how new immigrant and low income groups form the political attitudes that shape how they vote in the first place.