Respond to prefers-color-scheme dark in app web views

Follow section front redirects in Spectrum

Enable NLP source in PCS for load testing

Switch off the News Alerts Survey Widget when we have enough responses

Poll to determine if new LUF updates are available

Allows the winning A/B test variant to be turned on without Spectrum deployment

Show infinite scrolling sections in Assembler MultiView

Show option for NLP article summaries in Action Bar

Show NLP summaries collection recirc on article pages

A general feature flag for Recipe Features that aren't yet released

Feature flag for media team features that aren't yet released

Use new Orca video player for preroll plugin in Spectrum

Show the snow tracker (instead of the heat tracker) on Spectrum

What Trump promised oil CEOs as he asked them to steer $1 billion to his campaign

Judge keeps tying Trump to possible intimidation

What extremism looks like to Sean Hannity and his party

Think you want a dog? Take our quiz to find out if you’re ready.

In Photos: Russians mark 79th Victory Day with military parade

Tornadoes hit Michigan, damage FedEx facility

Need beauty? These are 7 of the most gorgeous gardens in the D.C. area.

Nationals finally run out of answers and fall to Orioles in 12 innings

4 best things to do with kids in the D.C. area this weekend

RFK Jr’s ‘history lesson’ on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine flunks the fact test

The Trump-Biden battle over the 2017 tax cut

That time football legend, rig-driving eligible bachelor Biden was arrested

Protesters descend on Eurovision, object to Israel’s participation

Emboldened Russia marks Victory Day with parade of nuclear-capable weapons

Deaf baby hears for the first time after ‘groundbreaking’ gene therapy trial

In Arizona, election workers trained with deepfakes to prepare for 2024

How Trump’s allies amplify his Truth Social messages to the wider world

Indy Star bars columnist from Caitlin Clark’s games after awkward exchange

Hack targeting hospital chain Ascension is impacting patient care

A college professor wants to use Section 230 against Big Tech

Commerce Department revokes more export licenses to China’s Huawei

5 big travel lessons from a Patagonia CEO-turned-conservationist

Cruise worker accused of stabbing 3 with scissors arrested in Alaska

France tries to shed its rude reputation ahead of the Olympics

Ask Amy: Relatives keep giving me updates on my old family home

Ask Sahaj: My husband wants me to forget all about his emotional affair

Carolyn Hax: Was it wrong to approach late wife’s pal for no-commitment sex?

In the campaign against Donald Trump, do the ends justify the means?

The next global crisis could come from the sun. We should prepare now.

The FTC’s noncompete clause rule goes too far

Dog hit by car loses leg, is adopted by firefighter who helped her

Postal worker finds WWII-era letters, drives 5 hours to deliver them

Strangers help Sesame Street puppeteer after heirloom necklace was stolen

Former U.S. President Donald Trump appears at court in New York

No one loves lawn signs more than political candidates. Political candidates love lawn signs because 1. They love seeing their name around, 2. They assume that the number of lawn signs they see somehow correlates to the level of support they enjoy and 3. They know that campaigns have lawn signs, and candidates are biased toward mimicking what winning candidates have done. Between 1984 and 2012, according to <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/11/the-popularity-and-irrelevance-of-our-lawn-sign-wars/264488/">one study</a>, use of lawn signs in campaigns quadrupled.

The problem with lawn signs, as any campaign manager would probably tell you, is that they are expensive, annoying, logistically tricky to distribute and — most importantly — don’t seem to do much of anything. Candidates like to feel as if they’re winning. Campaign managers like to know that they’re winning or at least making progress. So campaign managers like things that have either measurable effects on voters (like identifying targeted supporters) or demonstrated past effects (like advertising). Lawn signs don’t fit into either category. To a campaign manager, lawn signs are similar to randomly handing out fliers at a grocery store: a waste of time, money and energy.

Now there’s data out that, in the main, proves campaign managers right. Last October, we <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2014/10/22/can-a-good-ground-game-help-democrats-overcome-late-polls-an-expert-weighs-in/">spoke</a> with Donald Green, a professor at Columbia University who has done decades of work assessing the utility of various methods of voter outreach. He's also the lead author of <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0261379415002310">a study</a> released this month that evaluates the efficacy of lawn signs. Green partnered with researchers at universities in Upstate New York, Pennsylvania and Virginia to test signs in four races at the federal, state and local level.

Cutting to the chase: “[I]t appears that signs typically have a modest effect on advertising candidates’ vote shares — an effect that is probably greater than zero but unlikely to be large enough to alter the outcome of a contest that would otherwise be decided by more than a few percentage points.” The effect of such signs, the study suggests, is about the same as direct mail.

Of the researchers’ four experiments, only one involved what you might generally think of as yard signs. In three of the experiments, signs were placed in public places within randomly assigned precincts. In the fourth, signs were placed in supporters’ yards — the thing that campaigns often spend a lot of time coordinating. In that case, interestingly, the effects were essentially zero. Aggregated, the four experiments suggested that there was a 1.7 percentage-point boost to the candidate from the signs -- with a standard error of 0.7 percentage points. (In precincts adjacent to the targeted ones, there was a slightly smaller benefit.)

Green, et. al.

(The study included a sign, at right, paid for by FreedomWorks and used in the most recent Virginia gubernatorial election, which unfortunately misspelled the name of the state.)

In how many races would that sort of lawn-sign bump make a difference? Of 6,000-plus general and primary elections in House and Senate races between 2006 and 2012, only 2.2 percent of races were within 1.7 percentage points, according to our analysis of initial results. In other words, this could matter in 1-in-50 races.

The study also offers a result that candidates will love and campaign managers will hate. The effect is very small, but it would be hard for a campaign manager who's arguing for robust get-out-the-vote efforts to say no to a candidate who demands lawn signs in order to boost his margins. The silver lining is that the study suggests that the much-easier distribution of lawn signs in random public places is more effective than finding supporters and plunking signs in their yards.

But when have candidates ever sat down and considered the political science before making judgment calls in close races? Superstition dictates lawn signs, and candidates are the ones raising the money and putting their name on the ballot. The study would essentially have had to demonstrate that candidates who used them lost before a candidate would have second thoughts about the efficacy of lawn signs. And even then, he'd probably still buy them.

The Aftermath: The Last Days of the Baby Boom and the Future of Power in America

Ohio State University

Philip Bump is a Post columnist based in New York. He writes the newsletter <a href="https://wapo.st/3m3QTiy">How To Read This Chart</a> and is the author of <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/696653/the-aftermath-by-philip-bump/">The Aftermath: The Last Days of the Baby Boom and the Future of Power in America</a>.

Philip Bump

The Washington Post

Biden administration

The Fix

The 202s

Polling

Democracy in America

Election 2024

Politics

prism://prism.query/site,/politics/the-fix?limit=20

The Washington Post's political analysis blog.

prism://prism.query/site-articles-only,/politics&limit=20

Post Politics from The Washington Post is the source for political news headlines, in-depth politics coverage and political opinion, plus breaking news on the biden administration and White House, Congress, the Supreme Court, elections and more.

prism://prism.query/site,/politics/the-fix&limit=6