 The Persuasive Effects of Direct Mail: A Regression Discontinuity ApproachAlan Gerber, Daniel Kessler and Marc Meredith No 14206, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc Abstract: 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. JEL-codes: D70 (search for similar items in EconPapers) Published as Alan S. Gerber & Daniel P. Kessler & Marc Meredith, 2011. "The Persuasive Effects of Direct Mail: A Regression Discontinuity Based Approach," The Journal of Politics, vol 73(1), pages 140-155. Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:14206 Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from Access Statistics for this paper More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC. |
Is your work missing from RePEc? Here is how to contribute.
Questions or problems? Check the EconPapers FAQ or send mail to .
EconPapers is hosted by the
School of Business at Örebro University.