When Votes "Matter"

I have worked on a couple of political campaigns at the grassroots level. This mostly involved registering voters and knocking on doors. I once worked on a campaign with an incumbent Democratic congressional candidate in a very blue area. The strategy of this campaign was to make sure that the Democratic base turned out enough. While I knocked on doors, countless voters told me they did not want to vote because the incumbent was going to win. The word "pointless" was thrown around a lot. Both voters and campaigns know that elections all boil down to swing states and districts, so why show up if you live in a strong blue or a strong red area?

Returning to the paradox of voting, many voters already think that the probability of influencing the election (P) is small. P is infinitesimal in these reliably blue and red states. The only way I and other campaign staff convinced voters to show up was by suggesting that they would dislike the candidate if the opposing party won. As a result, they would regret not voting. I did not realize that we were using the minimax regret to try to convince people to vote. From my personal experience, it is very persuasive and does increase turnout. Hatred of the other candidate drives people to the ballot more than love of their preferred candidate. In retrospect, we likely made them overestimate their marginal benefit of voting by talking to them about the consequences of a loss.