Null effects of social media ads on voter registration: Three digital field experiments

Abstract

Civic organisations and progressive campaigns regard digital advertising as an essential method to register to vote low-participation groups, such as ethnic minorities, young voters and frequent home movers like private-sector tenants. Digital strategies appear to be promising in countries like the UK, where the registration process can be completed online, usually in less than 5 minutes, using a web link in the advert. But are typical digital campaigns effective in registering voters? To find out, we provide evidence from three randomised controlled trials: two conducted with advocacy organisations and the third run by the research team, carried out in two types of UK elections (general and local) and assigned either at the aggregate (Study 1 and Study 2) or individual (Study 3) level. Despite wide reach and relatively high rates of engagement, we find that the digital ad campaigns trialed across three studies did not affect under-registered groups’ voter registrations. These null findings raise questions about commonly-used digital advertising strategies to register marginalised groups. They are consistent with other studies that report either null or minimal effects of digital ads on other types of political behaviour.

Battle for Inbox and Bucks

“…By recognizing emails as an important form of political communication, we also highlight that a political campaign's communication goals may be multi-faceted. Of course, many studies examining the effect of social media (e.g., Bail et al, 2020;Campbell, 2013;Enikolopov et al, 2020;Fujiwara et al, 2023;González-Bailón et al, 2023;Guess et al, 2023bGuess et al, , 2023aHaenschen, 2016;Nyhan et al, 2023;Theocharis & Lowe, 2016) and digital advertising (e.g., Aggarwal et al, 2023;Beknazar-Yuzbashev & Stalinski, 2022;Bond et al, 2012;Liberini et al, 2023;Unan et al, 2024) on politics have focused on changes in political attitudes or voting-related behaviors. However, these very technologies can also be used to achieve other political campaign goals, including (though not limited to) fundraising (Auter & Fine, 2018;Petrova et al, 2021).…”

“…Some studies have provided evidence for the effects of political advertising on increasing voters' political knowledge (e.g., Atkin et al, 1973;Surlin & Gordon, 1977), affecting candidate image evaluation (e.g., Atkin & Heald, 1976;Becker & Doolittle, 1975), and impacting voters' election decisions (e.g., Kaid & Sanders, 1978;Weaver-Lariscy & Tinkham, 1996). However, when it comes to voter turnout, recent studies have found minimal effects of political advertising (e.g., Aggarwal et al, 2023;Beknazar-Yuzbashev & Stalinski, 2022;Unan et al, 2024).…”