Encouraging Crossover Voting in the 2024 Presidential Primary

Will voters participate in the primary of a party they oppose to prevent the nomination of a candidate they fear? Partnering with a Political Action Committee, we conduct a first-of-its-kind, large, preregistered field experiment (N = 83,800) in the 2024 Republican presidential primary in New Hampshire. A specialized get-out-the-vote intervention increases turnout in the Republican primary among undeclared voters who are modeled as likely to vote for Democratic candidates in general elections. Our treatment increased Republican primary turnout in this sample by 1.6 percentage points while reducing turnout in the Democratic Primary by 0.5 percentage points. Supplementing our experiment with surveys before and after the primary, we estimate that each vote cast by Democratic-leaning voters in the Republican primary produced a net of 0.75 votes for the relatively moderate Republican primary candidate. We argue that encouragements to crossover vote are an important avenue for bolstering sophisticated, pro-democracy behavior.