Academics Question Conventional Political Wisdom

Campaigns and Elections' Politics Magazine: "In the revised edition of their book, Green and Gerber make use of data spanning 9 years and find a good deal of evidence to bolster their earlier findings, namely that outreach in the form of direct mail and robocalls for GOTV purposes are relatively ineffective. The data Green and Gerber rely on stretches back to 1998 and was gathered in controlled experiments in the field with actual campaigns.
Among their conclusions: 'Direct mail is expensive, and its capacity to mobilize voters is typically rather limited.' As for robocalls, Green and Gerber say they 'might help you to stretch your resources in ways that allow you to contact the maximum number of people, but don't expect to move them very much, if at all.'"

Personally, I think there is some truth to some of their findings (especially the part about literature drops being completely useless). I don't agree with all their findings but I think as political professionals we need to not be afraid of the questions. We need to constantly assess our efforts and ask ourselves what we think works and what we can actually prove works.