Do States’ Voter Outreach Efforts Benefit One Political Party? No, Study Finds
Researchers with UMD’s Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement Studied Two States’ Efforts to Register Eligible but Unregistered Citizens During the 2016 Presidential Election
In a new PS: Political Science & Politics research paper, University of Maryland Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement researchers are refuting claims that only one political party benefits from the work of the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC), the entity that helps states work together to have up-to-date voter information.
ERIC is a national collaboration through which states who decide to become members share administrative data with one another in an effort to help them keep track of people who move from one state to another. In effect, this helps member states make sure that individuals who move away are removed from their voter rolls, and it helps states contact eligible but unregistered citizens (EBUs) in their area to encourage them to register to vote. ERIC requires that member states contact 95% of their EBUs.
In 2022, a conservative website made the claim that ERIC was using information from member states to drive up Democratic voter registration rates specifically. A number of Republican-led states then left ERIC. However, ERIC member states’ efforts to encourage EBUs to register to vote yield no partisan advantage, the CDCE’s latest study finds.
Looking at the results of the 2016 presidential election in two ERIC member states, Pennsylvania and Nevada, the researchers examined if the candidate that won each state had a margin of victory that was significantly influenced by the number of EBUs that the state reached out to. In both cases, the number of new voters that the winning candidate’s political party gained were minimal: Pennsylvania, where Donald Trump won by 44,292 votes, gained 2,710 more Republican voters than Democratic voters through their outreach efforts; and Nevada, where Hillary Clinton won by 27,202 votes, gained just 356 Democratic voters more than Republican voters through their outreach efforts.
“This research underscores the importance of using evidence to inform policy decisions,” said Michael Hanmer, CDCE director and UMD Department of Government and Politics professor. “The results reaffirm the unique ability of state officials to engage populations that are hard to reach and often ignored by the candidates and parties.”
The researchers—which include CDCE Fellow Jared McDonald, an assistant professor at the University of Mary Washington; CDCE Fellow Alauna Safarpour, an assistant professor at Gettysburg College; and Lisa Bryant, a professor at California State University, Fresno—were also to measure the actual impact of ERIC outreach efforts that involved sending postcards to EBUs.
Pennsylvania and Nevada both sent politically neutral postcards that encouraged recipients to register to vote, and shared a way in which recipients could do so online via website or QR code. They sent these to 95% of their EBUs, and did not send any postcards to the remaining 5%, which acted as a control group.
Ultimately, the researchers found that the postcards prompted low registration rates among EBU voters in both states, and that registration rates among postcard recipients were only slightly higher than the registration rates of the control group. In Pennsylvania, just over 8% of EBUs who received a postcard registered to vote, roughly 1% more than those who did not receive a postcard. In Nevada, approximately 5% of EBUs who received postcards registered to vote, which was 0.8-0.9 percentage points higher than registration rates among those who did not receive the postcards.
Though the registration rates were low overall, they were still meaningful: In both states, nearly every registered voter wound up actually casting a vote.
“I was somewhat surprised that a single postcard sent by state election officials could meaningfully boost turnout among Americans,” said McDonald. “It really speaks to the role that the government can play, beyond the role of political parties, to invite Americans to exercise their civic duty.”
This article by Rachael Grahame originally appeared on the College of Behavioral and Social Sciences (BSOS) website.
Published on Wed, 02/11/2026 - 13:56