{"id":1193,"date":"2023-06-01T12:55:15","date_gmt":"2023-06-01T19:55:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cn4partners.com\/?post_type=news&#038;p=1193"},"modified":"2023-06-01T12:55:15","modified_gmt":"2023-06-01T19:55:15","slug":"i-saw-the-sign","status":"publish","type":"news","link":"https:\/\/cn4partners.com\/news\/i-saw-the-sign\/","title":{"rendered":"I saw the sign"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Every year, clients ask us to order hundreds and even thousands of yard signs.<\/p>\n<p>Despite rising costs of up to $7 per sign, campaigns continue to double down on them. Controversy erupts when candidates&#8217; signs suddenly vanish in the dead of night and occasionally someone is even arrested for stealing campaigns signs.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s the favorite tactic of many grassroots activists yet is thoroughly hated by most political professionals.<\/p>\n<p>Who\u2019s right?<\/p>\n<p>While lawn signs are widely used in modern elections, their effectiveness has not been as widely studied as other forms of campaigning, such as door-to-door canvassing, direct mail, and telephone calls.<\/p>\n<p>A 2016 academic study led by the now famous political scientist Donald Green of Columbia University studied four campaigns with randomized experiments and testing.<\/p>\n<p>The findings included:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>After pooling the results of the four experiments and examining their averages, it appears that lawn signs raise vote shares, on average, by slightly more than 1 percentage point.<\/li>\n<li>Based on pooled results, lawn signs are \u201con par with other low-tech campaign tactics \u2026 \u00a0that generate effects that tend to be small in magnitude.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>Signs, in some scenarios, do not appear to be as effective when they make reference to a specific political party or ideology.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>While lawn signs appear to have a modest effect on voting outcomes, they could, theoretically, provide an edge in certain tight elections.<\/p>\n<p><strong>One place where signs can provide an edge is in very small races with low budgets, where candidates are all but unknown to the public.\u00a0<\/strong>Cindy Kam, a professor at Vanderbilt University, co-authored a study in 2011 in which yard signs for a fictitious county council candidate \u2014 &#8220;Ben Griffin&#8221; \u2014 were planted in lawns on well-trafficked streets.<\/p>\n<p>A survey was taken a few days later asking voters to list their choices for the county&#8217;s at-large council seats. Five real candidates were listed along with the fictitious Ben Griffin and another made-up name. Incredibly, nearly a quarter of respondents listed the fictional Ben Griffin among their top three picks. Kam concludes that in races where little information is available, &#8220;having some sense of name recognition, having seen a name, having seen multiple signs that convey a sense of viability [and] electability can be useful.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>While not an experiment, in 2018 Democratic US Senate candidate Doug Jones, running in deep-red Alabama, placed 15,000 yard signs as a way to give voters \u201cpermission\u201d to vote for him, by placing signs in the homes of prominent Republicans who couldn\u2019t stomach the idea of Ray Moore.<\/p>\n<p>What\u2019s key is how they distributed them.<\/p>\n<p>Anybody who wanted one first had to give their name, address, telephone number, and email address. The Jones supporter could pick one up from a neighbor, too, but only if they could also supply contact information. In my mind, this was the yard signs\u2019 most important contribution, with the data becoming a resource for the campaign, helping it organize and then mobilize its dedicated supporters and volunteers.<\/p>\n<p>Which supports what operatives have always said, which is that IF yard signs are distributed they should be used to collect volunteer support or information.<\/p>\n<p>So there you have it \u2013 signs (sadly) have a place in modern campaigning. Give me a call at 206-423-0120 and let&#8217;s chat about your campaign. I won&#8217;t even give you grief for ordering yard signs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","better_featured_image":null,"acf":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cn4partners.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-api\/1193"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cn4partners.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-api"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cn4partners.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cn4partners.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-api\/1193\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1194,"href":"https:\/\/cn4partners.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-api\/1193\/revisions\/1194"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cn4partners.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}