Why Making Voting Easier Isn’t Enough: Early Voting, Campaigns, and Voter Turnout

Early voting laws intended to increase voter turnout seem to have had little to no effect on turnout. Why? We argue that the effects of early voting on turnout are contingent on campaigns providing citizens with information about the election, their choices, and how to vote early. When campaigns do so, turnout increases because citizens are more likely to vote – and more likely to vote early. Using individual-level panel data, we show that direct campaign contact increases turnout exclusively via the use of early voting. Using county-level data, we show that campaign ad volume also increases turnout via an increase in early voting turnout. Our results affirm our expectation that campaigns facilitate the expected mobilizing effects of early voting. At the same time, the effects of campaigns on early voting are small in magnitude, and emerge only under campaign mobilization conditions that are more the exception than the norm.