9
they were specifically selected for mobilization because of their disinclination to reliably vote.
The Democrats and DTS registrants were more comparable to the electorate at large, since those
voters were selected for GOTV by different criteria and their voting habits were more typical
(see Table 2).
It is impossible under any circumstances to identify all of the unobserved, confounding
variables that might cause it to appear that a successful contact is having an effect on voter
turnout. However, some can be identified. One means to do that is to consider all of the reasons
why an attempt-to-treat might be unsuccessful. The commercial call center, fortuitously, did
more than just record whether each call was successfully completed or not; they kept track of the
disposition of each call. The results are summarized in Figure 3.
The full menu of possible dispositions were: 1-Busy, 2-No Answer, 3-Answering
Machine, 4-Line Dead, 5-Redirect to New Number, 6-Requested Callback, 7-Completed Call, 8-
Refusal, 9-Wrong Household, 11-Fax line/modem, 12-Abandoned Call, 13-Hang-up, 14-Dialer
Unavailable, 15-Disconnected, 16-Deceased, 17-Non-English Speaker, 18-Blocked call, 21-
Telephone Company Disconnection, 66-Request Removal From List.
These can be aggregated into six main types:
1.
Completed Call – A successful treatment. (Disposition 7 only.)
2.
Active Decline – The registrant takes some affirmative, unmistakable action indicating
s/he does not want to be solicited for turnout. (Dispositions 6, 8, 12, 13, 18, 66)
10
10
There were no cases recorded for dispositions 6, 12, and 13. What happened here was that the canvassers
recorded these instances as just different flavors of refusal, so they were all coded under 8.
Convention