The Persuasive Effects of Direct Mail: A Regression Discontinuity Approach

Alan Gerber, Daniel Kessler, Marc Meredith

NBER Working Paper No. 14206
Issued in July 2008
NBER Program(s):   PE   POL

During the contest for Kansas attorney general in 2006, an organization sent out 6 pieces of mail criticizing the incumbent's conduct in office. We exploit a discontinuity in the rule used to select which households received the mailings to identify the causal effect of mail on vote choice and voter turnout. We find these mailings had both a statistically and politically significant effect on the challenger's vote share. Our estimates suggest that a ten percentage point increase in the amount of mail sent to a precinct increased the challenger's vote share by approximately three percentage points. Furthermore, our results suggest that the mechanism for this increase was persuasion rather than mobilization.

(2230 K)

This paper is available as PDF (2230 K) or via email.

Acknowledgments

Machine-readable bibliographic record - MARC, RIS, BibTeX