By Gil Carter, Ph.D. student
Originally published: November 2, 2022
It’s the most wonderful time of year. No, not the holiday season, but the ELECTION SEASON!
With the 2022 midterms days away, I will provide a brief overview of an impactful but underrated campaign tool: physical mail sent to voters via the U.S. Postal Service.
You’ve Probably Got a Lot of Mail
If you live in a state or district with a competitive election, your mailbox has likely been full of political ads. Even though we see a proliferation of political mail in campaign busy seasons, fascinatingly, the content and effects of political mail are understudied (Benoit & Stein, 2005; Doherty & Adler, 2014). While physical mail is charmingly old-fashioned compared to the ads that cover our social media feeds, mail provides a number of unique benefits to political campaigns, including its ability to target voters individually, opening the opportunity to campaign to people based on specific characteristics, such as voting history, race, ethnicity, age, or residence (Binder et al., 2014). For example, many voters are unaware that their voting history is public record. Thus, campaigns and interest groups can take the contact information of everyone who voted in a party primary and send voters mail accordingly. For instance, if you vote in the Democratic primary reliably in Georgia, you are likely getting mail supporting Senator Raphael Warnock and Stacey Abrams and criticizing Herschel Walker and Governor Brian Kemp. Your neighbor, a non-voter, might get no mail, as they are not on lists of prospective voters. Thus, parties and interest groups can make sure their money is spent on ads to motivate partisan voters to turn out for their candidates. Around election season, it is understandable that people think ads are trying to change their votes, and many of them are, however, many ads are simply reinforcing messages and reminding people of commitments they already feel rather than trying to persuade them to hold a totally new opinion.
Compare this highly audience-centered approach in mail to a TV or radio commercial. Anyone, regardless of party preference or voting history, can see/hear those ads, meaning that campaigns effectively waste some money paying for ads that go to people who will not vote or will not vote for the candidate under any circumstances. Further, mailers can be sent to particular addresses, so they can account for gerrymandered or strange districts by only sending mail to the addresses in the district. Other kinds of ads cannot account for these messy district lines, as voters in one district are likely to see/hear TV, radio, and social media ads for elections in districts in which they do not live. Additionally, don’t forget the most obvious (and frustrating) benefit of mail. Unlike an ad on your social media, radio, or TV that you can ignore, when you receive mail, you must do something with it. Even if you throw it away, you still must quickly examine it to determine that it is disposable. Mailer creators know this, so they try to insert items, such as striking photos or memorable quotes, that will stand out even if you determine the mail is garbage. Even emails, which can be personalized in many respects, are not only less tangible, but they can be blocked by the receiver and/or caught by a spam folder. Of course, there is no spam folder or other way to stop the reception of unwanted physical political mail.
New Research
In response to the research void on mail, I conducted research on mailers in eight U.S. Senate elections and found they tended to use a combination of logical and emotional appeals in each mailer. For instance, a mailer from Maine featured the state’s longtime prominent Senator Susan Collins sitting on a mountain of cash. The text beside the photo of Collins, which had footnotes indicating sources for the information provided, detailed how Collins supposedly took money from special interests. Thus, a Mainer’s eyes would have been caught by the startling image of Collins and then drawn to the “facts” beside the picture to explain the supposed accuracy of the image portraying Collins’s corruption (Carter, 2021).
UA Assistant Professor Dr. Josh Bramlett and I are conducting a study on mail in U.S. Senate races going on now, and we have received mail from Florida, Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania, close states in each party’s search for a Senate majority. The current Senate is divided 50-50, giving the Democrats the narrowest majority possible, as they get Vice President Kamala Harris’s tie-breaking vote. Therefore, much is on the line for both parties, as Republicans hope for a net gain of only one seat to give them the majority, a typically attainable goal with a president in office from the other party who’s unpopular in swing states as President Biden currently is. Nonetheless, Democrats see the gaffes of the Republican nominees as helpful to their maintenance—and possibly the expansion—of their Senate majority. So, especially with the stakes as high as they are, as you are receiving these mailers, think about how they are trying to influence you—through your head, your heart, or, as my study found, some of each.
References
Benoit, W., & Stein, K. (2005). A functional analysis of presidential direct mail advertising.
Communication Studies, 56(3), 203–225.
https://doiorg.libdata.lib.ua.edu/10.1080/10510970500181181
Binder, M., Kogan, V., Kousser, T., & Panagopoulos, C. (2014). Mobilizing Latino voters: The
impact of language and co-ethnic policy leadership. American Politics Research, 42(4),
677–699. https://doi-org.libdata.lib.ua.edu/10.1177/1532673X13502848
Carter, G. (2021, November 18). Persuasion through Voters’ Mailboxes: An Inspection of Mailers from the U.S. Senate Elections of November 2020 [Conference Presentation]. National Communication Association 108th Annual Convention, Seattle, Washington.
Doherty, D., & Adler, E. S. (2014). The persuasive effects of partisan campaign mailers.
Political Research Quarterly, 67(3), 562–573.
https://doiorg.libdata.lib.ua.edu/10.1177/1065912914535987