This is the story of how the Electoral Commission put behavioural economic theory into practice and persuaded over 1.5 million people to add their details to the electoral register.
In the build up to the 2015 general election, the Commission’s data indicated that 7.5 million British citizens were not correctly registered to vote, with registration numbers having fallen by c.920,000 in the last year alone. Despite a campaign to drive awareness of the need to register just 6 months earlier, the importance of the registration message just wasn’t getting through.
Against this backdrop, the Electoral Commission was tasked with adding 1 million new additions to the electoral register, with a focus on core under registered groups, including young people, black and ethnic minorities, and home movers. This was an ambitious target given only c.500,000 new registrations were added to the electoral register in the run-up to the 2010 general election, and that was with 15% more budget.
They needed a new approach to drive behavioural change en masse. For inspiration, they turned to behavioural economics and the theory of loss aversion, developing a campaign to drive voter registration by simulating the sense of loss from being denied the right to vote.
Their creative angle took this strategy out of the voting hall and into everyday situations that everyone could relate to immediately. It was brought to life through a media strategy that ensured the idea worked as hard as possible across broadcast, social, and partnerships to drive action.
The results were compelling. During the course of a single month, the campaign surpassed its objective by over 50%, with particularly impressive impact across hard-to-reach under-registered groups.
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(Please note: parts of this case study may have been redacted for confidentiality purposes.)
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