Why We’re Targeting the Hardest to Reach Voters

(Photo by iStock/Prostock-Studio)

For Black Americans, the right to vote has never come easy. After centuries of systemic legal exclusion, our ancestors marched and shed blood time and time again for the right to cast a ballot and secure a place in American democracy. Nearly six decades after the Voting Rights Act of 1965, this struggle continues, with a rising tide of authoritarianism that deploys voter suppression as one of its most insidious weapons.

Today, Black men are major targets. In 2008 and 2012, with Barack Obama on the ballot, a record number of Black men turned out to vote. In response, the far right spread disinformation across major social media platforms to discourage Black voters. As a Senate inquiry concluded, Russian operatives and troll farms targeted “no single group … more than African-Americans.” Black voters saw messages like, “Our Votes Don’t Matter” and “Not one represents Black people. Don’t go to vote.”

It worked. In the following three cycles, participation plummeted.

People For the American Way’s “Defend the Black Vote” program is not only fighting authoritarianism by increasing voter turnout, but we are doing so by focusing specifically on low-propensity Black male voters. Our rationale for targeting the most exceptionally hard-to-turn-out group is that while they are targeted for suppression efforts, they are often neglected by other GOTV efforts. Their power as a voting bloc has been ignored and undervalued for far too long. To make our democracy stronger, we need to intentionally include communities that have been most heavily targeted for exclusion. When we find innovative solutions for the most vulnerable, following the “curb-cuts effect” for equity, those lessons can effectively mobilize voters and strengthen democracy for all.

A Data-Driven Approach

To learn more, we commissioned independent researchers to analyze a pilot project we ran in the fall of 2022, a direct-texting program that—with a modest investment of less than $150,000—included 1.7 million Black men, encouraging them to vote and including important information to help them make a plan to do so (the election date and a link to find a polling place). We focused on infrequent Black male voters, ages 18-60, in 15 states, who had voted in none or only one of the last three national elections; with the help of independent researchers at the Analyst Institute, we sought out answers to several key research questions, including the total cost to successfully activate one person to vote, the comparative success rates of different kinds of motivational messages, and the comparative effectiveness of texts that came from either automated or human sources. 

While voting rates fluctuate with every election, there has been a persistent turnout gap across racial lines, with higher rates of turnout among white voters over Black voters. In 2022, that gap widened to 12 percent, with a turnout rate of 57.6 percent in white Americans compared to a 45.6 percent rate in Black Americans. There is also a gender gap, with Black women voting at higher rates than Black men consistently for the past 30 years. This gender gap is present among voters of every race, but it is the widest among Black Americans.

Our goal is to increase Black male voter turnout until they join Black women as one of the most active voting demographic blocs in the nation. The political landscape would change dramatically if we closed this gender gap and brought another two to three million Black men to the polls. And we know from past elections that they are willing and able to vote when encouragement and mobilization efforts counter the suppression and disinformation efforts.

Lessons Learned

Closing the turnout gap by race and gender is doable, and it presents a seismic opportunity to make elections more representative of the views of all communities:

1. Cost Efficiency: Our direct texting produced an increase in voter turnout of slightly over half of one percent, with a highly predictable return of one additional vote, among our target group, for each $250 spent. This effect size may seem small, but (according to the Analyst Institute), it was a meaningful and statistically significant difference, providing a cost-effective method to mobilize this cohort of hard-to-reach voters at scale. The researchers note that the turnout rate for the control group of the population we studied was only 6 percent, much lower than Black male turnout overall, so even a half percent gain reflects a significant bump. Further testing will allow us to hone our methods and identify the potential for even greater significance if we scale up to a voting population of millions. In addition, in some states we found a positive “spillover” effect in which family members and friends of motivated voters also went to the polls—effectively lowering the cost per additional vote even further.

2. Effectiveness: We also learned what kinds of messaging options are most effective with this cohort. We tested two types of messaging. The first set emphasized the “social pressure” message, sharing it is public information whether a person votes in an effort to press the social norm of voting. The second set of messages centered around the idea of “collective power,” leaning into the importance of how their voice as a Black man matters. Previous research on the effectiveness of social pressure messages studied messages received by physical mail; less data exists for the effectiveness of these messages when sent by text. Even less is known about the efficacy of collective power messages in general. In our study, social pressure messages clearly outperformed collective power messages, confirming their effectiveness. This is vital data that ought to inform other voter mobilization efforts going forward.

3. Automation: We found no significant difference between messages sent by automation as compared to messages manually sent by human organizers, indicating that the program can be made even more cost-effective if there is no need for paid employees to generate texts. With limited funding resources and volunteer hours, we hope this finding will be helpful to those who are making decisions about where to place limited resources.  

4. Simple Texting Methods CAN Motivate a Complex Population-Level Behavior Shift: Our efforts used simple SMS-texting communications to influence a complex behavior change at scale among a particularly difficult-to-convert cohort. We were encouraged to see that we could influence behavior with digital outreach, since the ability to translate virtual contact into real-world action is a rapidly evolving area of research in the advocacy world today. Social science shows that behavior change is especially difficult when a pattern has been set over many years, as was the case with our target group.

Would-be voters need to overcome many structural barriers. For example, imagine an hourly worker who needs to take time off work, a parent who needs to arrange for childcare, a transit commuter who needs to travel, a person with a disability who needs mobility support, or a foreign-language speaker who needs translation services. Others may have to find the precise kind of qualifying identification, research limited poll hours or far away locations, or even overcome intimidation. In some states, voter file purges and restrictive voting laws make casting a ballot even more arduous. In the context of the actual time and resources required to perform what many of us see as a simple act of voting, any demonstrable increase in voter turnout is remarkable. 

Our Democracy Needs to Defend the Black Vote

Black men are acutely affected by anti-democratic restrictions on voter access, as well as historic systemic barriers designed to exclude them from voting. Having invested in the gold standard of research with randomized controlled trials, we believe the strategies we identify will be broadly applicable across the country. Building a more representative electorate nationwide, which includes the conversion of Black men who have been low-propensity voters into habitual voters, will yield policy agendas more responsive to community interests.

Fifty-eight years after the passage of the Voting Rights Act, we cannot allow authoritarian forces to send our country backward. And the best antidote to massive voter suppression is massive voter mobilization. In the years ahead, we need to value and invest in turning out Black voters and not take anything—especially our democracy—for granted.

Read more stories by Roger Vann.