Social Network Structure and Peer-to-Peer Voter Mobilization: Evidence from Social Network Surveys.

With recent experimental studies of voting contagion and the usefulness of social pressure, there has been growing attention to the role peer-mobilization plays in turning out the vote. Despite this surge of interest in peer-mobilization and decades of study of party-mobilization, political science has still devoted little study of the role of social network structure in mediating these efforts. In an effort to help close this gap in the literature, this paper examines two questions. First, how do network characteristics shape the probability that actors within that network receive mobilizing appeals? Second, how do network characteristics influence individuals’ probability of turning out to vote when they receive such an appeal? Through the use of social network survey data, this paper examines how real-world networks shape political mobilization, with implications both for scholars of voting behavior and practitioners of GOTV organizing. Moreover, as it examines the political consequences of network characteristics studied more frequently in other fields including local clustering, multiplicity, and foci, this paper seeks to add to the political science toolbox as well as to the literature. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]