The Activate America webinar Tuesday reported on a specific study of postcarding that they conducted in two districts in NV.  The webinar was recorded and will be available if anyone wants to dig into the statistical weeds.  They also promised to send out a copy of the study and of the slide show synopsis that they presented on Tuesday.  I found the event and the study modestly interesting, but less encouraging than did the researchers and the org leaders.

The study attempted to measure whether receiving a postcard that told Democratic and Independent voters in two districts that Senator Catherine Cortez Masto and their Congressional Representative had supported the covid relief stimulus payment bill, while not one Republican had voted for it, had a positive effect on the voters’ favorability rating of Cortez Masto and their Rep.

The take away was that there was a statistically significant rise (at .05 level) in Cortez Masto’s favorability rating compared with a control group that did not receive the postcard. However, there was no rise in favorability for the congressional reps.  The presenter’s interpretation was that postcards work best on better known candidates, but they should be part of a broad, multi-faceted GOTV campaign.

Activate America also announced that they are launching a study in Wisconsin that will try to compare efficacy of postcards vs texting.  I believe they said that they will be testing the efficacy of negative messaging (against Ron Johnson) in that study.

Finally they reported that they are currently launching numerous voter registration campaigns (some in Virginia) including postcards, phone banks, and instagram Direct Messaging.