What do the academics say? Handwritten letters work

Welcome to the latest in my occasional series highlighting interesting findings from academic research. Today – another report on campaign field experiments carried out by academic Florian Foos in cooperation with the Labour party in Southampton.

The results were presented to the recent EPOP 2016 academic conference, the slides for which are reproduced below. They are somewhat technical in places, so here are the two key findings:

1. Canvassing data came out as accurate when compared to an independent telephone survey – suggesting that it can be used meaningfully to track the impact of campaign tactics, and
2. Handwritten letters to voters are effective at winning votes (example included in the slides).

You can read the other posts in the What do the academics say? series here.