campaigns and voting behavior

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Campaigns and Voting Behaviour
Campaigns in politics spend many millions of dollars in each cycle of voting aiming to persuade voters. It has been established that the campaign has an impact on the voting decisions. However, it is least known of the kind of context and method of delivery of the message and how it affects the voters. The article focused on a field experiment done for the general election in the year 2010. The experiment looks to identify the mechanisms of persuasion of voters that are behind any certain campaigning form.
Candidates canvased a homestead or left some form of literature without necessarily speaking to the voters (3). The literature left behind indicates the candidate’s information such as their manifesto or guidelines indicating on how to vote. The paper concludes that voters are greatly affected by a delivery method involving personal contact instead of the content of the message. Personal contact seems to work not due to the facts of social pressure but because of the provision of a quality signal that is verifiable.
Voters have been reached by candidates through a variety of methods including calls, radio advertisements and directs messages or emails. These methods are less costly ways of engaging voters. However, personal contact is considered the greatest effective method of campaigning. The literature that relates to campaign phenomenon according to this study, measures average spending and high outcomes of votes (5).

This study is one among many that utilizes both field and natural experiments that looks on particular types of campaigning and their effect on voter turnout. The results obtained offered some importance due to various reasons. First, through the study of the effects of personal interaction in campaigns, it offers the opportunities to determine if the interactions have an impact on the future and an action that is private. The second, persuasion is key in numerous economic activities such as fundraisers, selling of merchandise and products (26). Persuasion mechanisms, the method, and message contribute to the understanding of how it works in settings that are diverse. Finally, the campaign needs to be practical.
The candidate’s behavior during the delivery of the message during the personal interaction involves his introduction followed by request for the support of the voters. Then again the candidate asks the voters for questions in regard to his/ her campaign. The candidate then leaves the literature which can be in the form of a pamphlet (27). The study examined the turnout of voters and also their support, and the results indicate that campaign had no effect. The campaigns by the candidates decreased voting among some individual groups. The voters who receive the pamphlet were not mobilized and less likely did not vote. Therefore, the results indicate that the messages in some part matter in voting turnout resulting to support from voters being nil. The turnout of voters suggests that voters do pay great attention to the message on the pamphlet (30). With all this scrutiny the main conclusion made reflects that the message did not impact meaningfully on voter support. Hence it means the messages are not as important.
In conclusion, other studies on campaign and voting behavior have addressed how different effective methods of campaigning have on political outcomes. The study is one among the first to show the impact of messages on elections. It suggests evidence that more than a political position is significant in decisions by voters from whom to give their support. The results from the study play a huge role in academics, political aspirants, federal institutions and practitioners in their aim to identify the influence of persuasion on voters.

Work Cited
Jared Barton, Marco Castillo, and Ragan Petrie. What Persuades Voters? A Field Experiment on Political Campaigning. Interdisciplinary Center for Economic Science: George Mason University. November 2011, Pp. 3-30. Retrieved from: http://cess.nyu.edu/policon2012/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Regan-Petrie-Candidate-Canvassing.pdf