Jonah Berger

 This passage is adapted from Jonah Berger, Contagious: Why 
Things Catch On. ©2013 by Social Dynamics Group, LLC.
Although geography clearly matters in voting—the 
East Coast leans Democratic while the South skews 
Republican—few people would think that the exact 
venue in which they vote matters.
But it does.
Political scientists usually assume that voting is 
based on rational and stable preferences: people 
possess core beliefs and weigh costs and benefits when 
deciding how to vote. If we care about the 
environment, we vote for candidates who promise to 
protect natural resources. If we're concerned about 
health care, we support initiatives to make it more 
affordable and available to greater numbers of people. 
In this calculating, cognitive model of voting behavior, 
the particular kind of building people happen to cast 
their ballot in shouldn't affect behavior.
But we weren't so sure. Most people in the United 
States are assigned to vote at a particular polling 
location. Polling locations are typically public 
buildings—firehouses, courthouses, or schools—but 
can also be churches, private office buildings, or other 
venues.
Different locations contain different triggers. 
Churches are filled with religious imagery, which 
might remind people of church doctrine. Schools are 
filled with lockers, desks, and chalkboards, which 
might remind people of children or early educational 
experiences. And once these thoughts are triggered, 
they might change behavior. Could voting in a school 
lead people to support educational funding?
To test this idea, Marc Meredith, Christian 
Wheeler, and I acquired data from each polling place 
in Arizona's 2000 general election. We used the name 
and address of each polling location to determine if it 
was a church, a school, or some other type of building. 
Forty percent of people were assigned to vote in 
churches, 26 percent in schools, 10 percent in 
community centers, and the rest in a mix of apartment 
buildings, golf courses, or even RV parks.
Then we examined whether people voted 
differently at different types of polling places. In 
particular, we focused on a ballot initiative that 
proposed raising the sales tax from 5.0 percent to 5.6
percent to support public schools. This initiative had 
been hotly debated, with good arguments on both sides. 
Most people support education, but few people enjoy 
paying more taxes. It was a tough decision.
 If where people voted didn't matter, then the percent 
supporting the initiative should be the same at schools 
and other polling locations.
 But it wasn't. More than ten thousand more people 
voted in favor of the school funding initiative when the 
polling place was a school. Polling locations had a 
dramatic impact on voting behavior.
 And the initiative passed.
 This difference persisted even after we controlled for 
things like regional differences in political preferences 
and demographics. We even compared two similar 
groups of voters to double-check our findings: people 
who lived near schools and were assigned to vote at one 
versus people who lived near schools but were assigned 
to vote at a difference type of poling place (such as a 
firehouse). A significantly higher percentage of the 
people who voted in schools were in favor of increasing 
funding for schools. The fact that they were in a school 
when they voted triggered more school-friendly 
behavior. 
 A ten-thousand-vote difference might not seem like 
much. But it was more than enough to shift a close 
election. In the 2000 presidential election the difference 
between George Bush and Al Gore came down to less 
than 1000 votes. If 1000 votes is enough to shift an 
election, 10,000 certainly could. Triggers matter.

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