Turnout
The field experiments on what moves turnout, the tactics ranked against each other, and Victoria's own turnout record.
hat actually gets people to turn out and vote? And what does that question mean in Victoria, where voting is compulsory and the fine, rather than the knock on the door, is what brings people in?
Gerber & Green (2000)
A field experiment in New Haven before the 1998 election, testing door-knocking, direct mail and phone calls on about 30,000 registered voters.
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The 8.7-point canvassing figure is measured on people who answered the door. Spread over a whole list, with contact around a quarter to a third, the number for everyone is much smaller.
In the New Haven experiment mail moved turnout by half a point per mailing and the phone moved it not at all.
Mann & Haenschen (2024)
A re-analysis of 240 US field experiments on getting out the vote, split into elections people were already paying attention to and ones they were not.
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The experiments are mostly American and mostly from elections with low attention. Where attention is already high, the same tactics do less.
Victorian Electoral Commission (2026)
The Victorian Electoral Commission's handbook for the 2026 state election, with turnout and enrolment figures going back to 2010.
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Victoria votes under compulsion. Turnout was 87.13% in 2022, down from 92.96% in 2010 and 93.02% in 2014, so the fall is happening even where voting is required.
Synthesis
No comparable field-experiment record exists for Australia, or for Victoria.
It is not known whether the salience attenuation found in US elections holds under compulsory voting.
Nothing here accounts for why Victoria's turnout has fallen by nearly six points since 2010.
How much of any canvassing effect comes from a conversation with a neighbour rather than a knock by a stranger is not measured.
Linked notes
/notes/persuasion
/notes/preference-flows
/notes/why-voters-defect
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