Replication Data for: Voter outreach campaigns can reduce affective polarization among implementing political activists: evidence from inside three campaigns

Campaigns regularly dispatch activists to contact voters. Much research considers theseconversations’ effects on voters, but we know little about their impacts on the implementingactivists—an important population given the outsized influence politically active Americanswield. We argue personal persuasion campaigns can reduce affective polarization among theimplementing activists by creating opportunities forperspective-getting. We report uniquedata from three real-world campaigns wherein activists attempted to persuade voters who hadopposing viewpoints: two campaigns about a politicized issue (immigration) and a third aboutthe 2020 Presidential election. All campaigns trained activists to persuade voters through in-depth, two-way conversations. In pre-registered studies, we find that these efforts reducedaffective polarization among implementing activists, with reductions large enough to reverseover a decade’s increase in affective polarization. Qualitative responses are consistent withthese conversations producingperspective-getting, which reduced animosity by humanizingand individuating outpartisans. We discuss implications for theories of prejudice reduction.