In 2018, I was involved with a mail experiment that shed light on the effectiveness of moving from propaganda to clean information. That year, a well-funded experiment tested three mailing concepts in a special election for congress in Pennsylvania's 17[SUP]th[/SUP] congressional district.
One of the pieces was a traditional mail format with pictures, color and dramatic headlines.
One of the pieces portrayed the opponent taking controversial positions, as if the opponent had sent the mailing himself.
Neither had any effect.
The only mailing that moved voters in a statistically significant way had no pictures, no colors and only one font. It was lasered onto an 8 ½ x 11 sheet of paper and folded in half with the voter's address on the outside. Inside was a letter. Remember those? The letter said: "We are the Center for Voter Information, we do not endorse candidates, but we provide information about candidates for office." The letter listed three issues and stated the two candidates' positions on each issue. Each of these issues was stated in a clinical way to avoid any appearance of bias. Simple. Basic. Unadorned. It was the neighborhood watch mailing without the picture of the dog.
The mailing added 1.5 votes for every 100 voters mailed.
Among the three mailings tested, the issues were the same. The only difference was that the winning piece had no endorsement, a carefully neutral description of the issues and a respect for the voter in allowing her to draw her own conclusion.
The obvious inference is that this mailing worked while others did not because it was more credible to voters.
In the general election, the Center for Voter Information rolled out and measured the effect of 5.5 million pieces. The result was that the mailing produced 1.15 votes for every 100 voters mailed.
Traditional political advertising is barely working at all.
While voters are choosing parties, we are telling them about candidates.
The reckless behavior of the Republican Party is a historic opportunity to change voter allegiances - but in the midst of this change, the Democratic Party has not responded at all.
