Are Electronic Media Any Good at Getting Out the Vote?

In Get Out the Vote, co-authors Donald Green and Alan Gerber argue that political consultants and campaign managers have underappreciated boots-on-the-ground canvassing in person and on the phone, in favor of less personal, more easily-scaled methods—radio and TV advertising, robocalling, mass mailings, and the like. Unlike campaign professionals, they base their case with real data, based on experimental research. Donald Green is a political scientist at Columbia University focusing on such issues as voting behavior and partisanship, and most importantly, methodologies for studying politics and elections.