cLOSING THE TURNOUT GAP

In 2021, Policy For Progress (PFP) performed a series of polls investigating reasons for relatively low turnout among Black voters in the preliminary stage of the city’s 2021 mayoral election. Using the opportunity of Boston’s two-stage mayoral elections, PFP then conducted a randomized control trial (RCT) to test the impact of receiving a mailer and personalized text message on likelihood to vote in the final stage of the same mayoral election among a randomized population of 35,500 Black voters in Boston who had voted in the 2020 Presidential election but not the 2019 municipal preliminary election.