Constituent contacts can influence how legislators vote

Does calling your legislator actually lead to results for those who are passionately for or against certain legislation? In new research, using a randomized field experiment, Daniel Bergan finds that it does. Those legislators who received at least one phone call from a constituent asking them to support a certain bill were 11-12 percent more likely to support the legislation, an effect independent of the legislators’ party, gender or the competitiveness of their district.