There are some obvious advantages of letter and postcarding campaigns:

• Reaching addresses that are inaccessible by phone or impractical to canvas to;
• Written over time, stockpiled, and then deployed on a strategically important date;
• And finally, colorful, handwritten postcards, or hand-addressed letters can stand out visually in a pile of direct mail.

But do the letters and postcards change behavior?  Here is some data to answer that question:

• Vote Forward reports that their 2020 letters to voters boosted turnout by .8 percentage points and that 17.6 million letters translated to about 126,000 votes across 21 states.  If this seems small, remember that the Georgia 2020 presidential race came down to .2 percentage points.  
• A study conducted during the 2017 Virginia election cycle showed that 13,000 handwritten postcards increased turnout by .4 percentage points. 
• In 2019, Swing Left reported a 3.1% increase in vote by mail enrollments in FL precincts where reminder postcards were deployed as opposed to a .35% improvement in precincts that did not receive postcards.

While none of these studies are conclusive or can predict the future, they indicate that Indivisible Montgomery’s work on letters and postcards has a positive impact!  Let’s continue to Do the Write Thing in 2023 and 2024.