As I’ve written about before (here and here), I’ve started volunteering with my county Democratic party.
One of the things I’ve done is start calling people who voted to thank them for doing so. (In Texas, the voting records—i.e., did you vote, and which party primary you voted in—is a matter of public record.) I was calling during the day, so I got a lot of answering machines.
But the key is that I changed the script a little bit when I called. Instead of saying:
Thank you for voting . . .
I said this:
Thank you for being a voter . . .
You might be wondering what difference this makes. Would you believe it could make a 10 percent difference in turnout?
Well, it’s true.
Researchers found that by simply rephrasing one survey question How important is it for you to vote in tomorrow’s election? as How important is it for you to be a voter in tomorrow’s election?, a significantly higher percentage of people who saw the latter question actually turned out to vote. (It goes almost without saying that it doesn’t even need to be 10 percent to make a big difference.)
The logic appears to be that, contrary to the logic that “active verbs are important,” belonging to a group can be even better. By saying “I’m a voter” rather than “I vote,” people can feel part of a larger community, rather than just an anonymous cog. (More on the logic of this can be found in this paper.)
This is doubly important because this might work to fix the Democratic Party’s turnout problem. Republicans turn out consistently—they’re voters. We need Democrats to stop “voting” (which often ends up being every four years) and start making them “voters” (which means voting in every election).
So, when you talk to people, don’t just talk to them about voting, talk to them about be(com)ing voters. It might make all the difference in the world in 2018 and 2020.