VoteAmerica’s 2020 billboard and gas station GOTV campaign

Analysis and memo prepared by Professor Scott Minkoff. Scott Minkoff is associate professor of political science at SUNY New Paltz and the co-author of Politics on Display: Yard Signs and the Politicization of Social Spaces (2019, Oxford University Press).

Summary

For the 2020 general election cycle, VoteAmerica ran a billboard and gas station-television advertising campaign in Arizona, Georgia, and North Carolina. This “GO VOTE” campaign encouraged people to vote on or ahead of Election Day. This program evaluation examines the effectiveness of these campaigns at promoting turnout and encouraging early and absentee voting using a combination of methods – including a random control trial field experiment and a matching analysis. Overall, the results are mixed on the question of turnout but offer considerable evidence that the billboards encouraged the shift from traditional Election Day voting to early and absentee voting.