Prompting participation: can a personalised message to the newly enrolled have an impact on turnout?

Dr Helena Catt and Peter Northcote
New Zealand Electoral Commission

Refereed paper presented to the AustralasianPoliticalStudiesAssociationconference
University of Newcastle 25-27 September 2006

Abstract

New Zealand young people are losing the voting habit. In recent years the newly enrolled have been significantly less likely to enrol and to vote than have older cohorts. The New Zealand Electoral Commission ran two experiments at the 2005 general election encouraging the newly enrolled to vote through the use of personalised mail items and txt messages. The creation of the messages was based on political and social marketing theory and were designed by the same ad agency that creates the election information ads. This paper reports on the experiment and discusses implications for future interventions.