Strategic mobilization of voters

Abstract

Organized public demonstrations of voter support for policy issues through rallies and petitions are mechanisms by which interest groups sometimes seek to influence political decision-making. We develop a voter-participation model of an interest group's strategic decision to publicly mobilize supportive voters through either a petition with zero participation cost or through a public rally with positive participation cost. Our model shows that voter mobilization can be influential when elected politicians are sufficiently uncertain about two dimensions of voters' preferences, the breadth of support for the issue and the saliency of the issue. The distribution of voter preferences – defined by the numbers of policy supporters and opposers and election vote-switchers and non-switchers – determines whether low or high participation-cost forms of mobilization are optimal. The model's predictions are consistent with recent mobilization campaigns organized by a range of interest groups, such as firms, environmental activists, and racial justice advocates.