Count What You Can Count: What Yard Signs, Billboards, and Campaign Goodies Are Really Worth

Only Count What You Can Count: What Yard Signs, Billboards, and Campaign Goodies Are Really Worth

For teams turning those lessons into a repeatable field process, Activate keeps canvassing activity and follow-up in one place.

Yard signs, billboards, pens, buttons, and campaign goodies can build visibility. But visibility is not victory. Here is how a local campaign can use them without confusing what looks like momentum with what can actually be measured.

One of the first rules of campaign work is also its most durable

Only count what you can count.

The rule endures because campaigns are full of things that look countable.

A yard sign is standing there in broad daylight. A billboard is enormous. A box of campaign pens arrives with 500 pens printed right on the invoice. A volunteer walks into headquarters and announces that the neighborhood is “covered.” Everybody looks around, feels a little taller, and thinks: Now this looks like a campaign.

And it does.

But looking like a campaign and building a campaign are not the same job.

A campaign can count how many signs it bought. It can count how many signs it delivered. It can count how much a billboard cost and how many pens disappeared from a table at the street festival.

What it cannot automatically count is how many minds changed, how many voters committed, how many volunteers joined, or how many ballots were cast because of them.

That does not make signs, billboards, pens, buttons, stickers, fans, magnets, or any of the other bright little artifacts of democracy worthless. Far from it. They can create recognition. They can help supporters express pride. They can make a first-time candidate feel real in a race where the better-known name begins with an enormous advantage.

But they must be given the right job.

A sign is a signal—not a conversation

A good yard sign can perform several useful tasks at once.

It can teach a voter a candidate’s name. It can signal that a campaign is active. On private property, it can show that a neighbor is willing to identify publicly with the candidate. In a low-information local race—school board, village trustee, county commissioner, alderperson, or another office that may receive little news coverage—that repeated exposure may matter.

The best experimental evidence says it can matter modestly.

In four randomized field experiments involving campaigns for Congress, mayor, governor, and county commissioner, researchers placed signs in randomly selected precincts. When they pooled the results, the estimated direct effect was a 1.7-percentage-point increase in the advertising candidate’s vote share, with an estimated 1.5-point spillover into adjacent precincts. The authors concluded that signs probably have an effect greater than zero, but one generally too small to change a race that would otherwise be decided by more than a few points.

That is not nothing.

One or two points can be meaningful in a close election. A sign can be especially valuable to a challenger who must first cross the basic threshold of being known. The same study estimated a direct cost of about $3.18 per additional vote in its four experiments, although the uncertainty around that estimate was wide and the campaigns’ circumstances will not necessarily match yours.

But the same research found essentially no turnout effect. The signs appeared more capable of shifting vote share than of creating new voters.

There is the distinction.

A sign may help a voter recognize or choose a candidate. It does not knock on the door, hear a concern, identify a supporter, recruit a volunteer, arrange a ride to the polls, or confirm that somebody voted.

A sign is a signal. A conversation can become a relationship. A recorded conversation can become a plan.

A billboard makes the same promise at a larger size

A billboard is hard to ignore and easy to admire.

It can announce that a candidate exists. It can place a name along a familiar commute. It can reinforce a short message again and again. In the right location, for the right price, it may be a legitimate awareness purchase.

But size is not measurement.

A nationwide randomized experiment during the 2020 general election assigned 298 billboards across 155 geographic clusters. Researchers modeled exposure using cellphone-movement patterns and measured turnout using public records. The estimates were close to zero overall. Their conclusion was plain: signage appeared to do little to increase turnout in a high-salience election.

Again, that does not mean nobody saw the billboards. It means seeing a billboard and voting because of a billboard are different outcomes.

If a campaign buys one, it should know what it is buying. A billboard is primarily a reach-and-recognition tool. It is usually not a targeting tool, a persuasion conversation, or a voter-identification system. Many people who pass it may live outside the district, be ineligible to vote there, already support the candidate, oppose the candidate, or pay no attention at all.

The board may be ten feet tall. The usable result may still be impossible to see.

A pen can be useful without being a vote

Campaign goodies live in a warmer part of politics.

A pen can stay in a kitchen drawer. A button can appear at a rally. A tote bag can walk through a farmers market. Stickers can delight children, volunteers, and candidates who have been staring at spreadsheets for too long.

These items can create belonging. They can thank a volunteer. They can make a supporter feel part of something. They may keep a name visible longer than a piece of literature that reaches the recycling bin before the door closes.

That is real value. But independent evidence that a free campaign pen produces votes is thin. Most confident claims about promotional products come from the companies that sell them, not randomized electoral research.

Newer research also gives campaigns a reason to be thoughtful about merchandise. A University of Arizona research program found that symbolic public support—such as wearing or buying political merchandise—can sometimes substitute for deeper participation. In one observational comparison of 2020 contributors, merchandise purchasers were substantially less likely to vote or volunteer than people who donated without receiving merchandise. The researchers did not argue that campaigns must abandon merchandise; they warned that visible support does not always become meaningful action.

The lesson is not “no pens.”

The lesson is: do not count the pen twice.

If you hand somebody a pen, you distributed one pen. You did not necessarily gain one supporter. If the person scans a campaign QR code, signs up for a shift, requests a yard sign, makes a contribution, or tells you the issue that matters most, then you have an additional result to record.

The object becomes more valuable when it opens a door to an action.

What is all of it worth compared with voter contact?

This is where the old rule becomes operational.

Compare a yard-sign delivery with a door knock.

The sign delivery can produce

• one sign delivered;

• one supporter location confirmed;

• one visible endorsement, if placed on private property with permission; and

• an opportunity for future follow-up.

A real doorstep conversation can produce

• one voter reached;

• a measured support level;

• an issue identified;

• a question requiring follow-up;

• a volunteer prospect;

• a donor prospect;

• a vote plan; and

• better information for the campaign’s next decision.

Research from six randomized local-election canvassing experiments found an average 2.1-percentage-point turnout increase among voters assigned to receive a visit. Among people actually contacted face to face, the estimated effect was about 7.1 points—roughly one additional vote for every 12 successful contacts. Those numbers are not a universal promise, but they show why campaigns prize direct human contact: it can mobilize, persuade, listen, and generate usable data at the same time.

A billboard broadcasts one message to an unknown audience. A canvasser can ask a voter a real question and record the answer.

A pen may remind someone of your name. A phone call can ask whether that person needs their polling location.

A sign can show support. A field system can show where support exists, which voters need another contact, and whether the campaign is turning enthusiasm into ballots.

Visibility has value. Contact has value plus information.

Give every object a measurable next step

The mistake is not ordering signs. The mistake is operating a sign program that ends when the sign enters the ground.

Every visibility tactic should connect to an action the campaign can record.

Yard signs

Do not begin with a pile. Begin with supporter requests.

Record the requester’s name, address, permission, delivery status, date placed, and whether the supporter is willing to volunteer, host an event, make a contribution, or remind friends to vote. Give every sign a QR code or short web address when the design and election rules allow it. Schedule removal before Election Day arrives.

And distinguish carefully between a sign in a supporter’s yard and a sign pushed into an anonymous roadside strip. One represents a person willing to be known. The other may represent only a campaign willing to buy signs.

Billboards

Use a unique, memorable URL, QR code only where it can be accessed safely, or a distinct phone number. Establish the baseline traffic before the board goes up. Measure visits, sign-ups, donations, and volunteer conversions during the run. Ask new supporters how they heard about the campaign.

Do not confuse estimated impressions with identified voters. Impressions describe possible exposure. Conversions describe an action.

Pens and promotional items

Attach the item to an exchange, not merely an encounter.

Use it to thank somebody who completes a volunteer shift, attends a training, signs up for election reminders, or contributes. At a festival table, track how many people stopped, how many lived in the district, how many joined the list, and how many later took another action.

Five hundred pens distributed may sound impressive. Fifty verified district voters added to a follow-up program may be far more useful.

The visibility funnel

A disciplined campaign can measure these tactics through a simple funnel:

1. Inventory: How many items did we buy?
2. Distribution: How many were actually placed or handed out?
3. Qualified reach: How many reached people who can vote, volunteer, donate, or influence the race?
4. Response: How many people scanned, visited, called, replied, or requested more information?
5. Conversion: How many became identified supporters, volunteers, donors, event attendees, or vote-plan participants?
6. Follow-through: How many completed the action they promised?

Then calculate what matters

• cost per qualified contact;

• cost per identified supporter;

• cost per volunteer recruited;

• cost per donation acquired;

• cost per vote-plan commitment; and

• completion rate for every promised follow-up.

The campaign should also ask what the same money and volunteer time could have produced elsewhere. That is the comparison too often omitted.

A $2,000 billboard does not cost only $2,000. It also costs whatever the campaign could have done with $2,000 in canvassing materials, phone outreach, direct mail, digital acquisition, volunteer support, or paid organizer time.

The correct question is never merely, “Did this do something?”

The question is, “Did this do more than our next-best use of the same money and time?”

Do not make volunteers serve the merchandise

Campaigns can lose entire afternoons to signs.

Volunteers load them, place them, replace them, rescue them after storms, investigate rumors that the opponent has more of them, and drive past intersections to make sure they are still standing. Meanwhile, the voters behind those signs have not been called.

Set a budget. Set a distribution plan. Set a time limit. Record every request and delivery. Then return the team to voter contact.

The merchandise should serve the campaign. The campaign should not serve the merchandise.

This is especially important for a first-time candidate. A challenger often needs signs because name recognition is a real obstacle. The candidate may also need the morale that comes from seeing a name finally appear across the community.

Enjoy that moment.

Then ask what happened next.

Count people because people are the point

“Only count what you can count” was never advice to drain the joy out of campaigning.

It was advice to protect the work.

People give campaigns their Saturdays, their evenings, their money, their hope, and sometimes the first political courage they have ever exercised in public. A campaign owes them more than a photograph of a busy office and a warehouse full of signs. It owes them a plan that learns from every honest conversation and uses every dollar with respect.

So use the signs. Put the name in the neighborhood. Let the supporter feel proud.

Use the billboard if the audience, location, price, and objective make sense.

Hand the volunteer a button. Give the child a sticker. Pass out the pens.

But know what each thing is for. Connect it to a measurable next step. Compare it with what direct voter contact could accomplish. And never allow something that can be counted—signs, impressions, pens—to impersonate the thing the campaign is actually trying to count: people persuaded, people mobilized, people participating, and votes earned.

Democracy should be visible.

Victory must be organized.

If your campaign is ready to turn visibility into conversations, conversations into accurate data, and accurate data into the next good decision, start a free campaign with Activate.

Toward Victory!

Sources and further reading

• Donald P. Green, Jonathan S. Krasno, Alexander Coppock, Benjamin D. Farrer, Brandon Lenoir, and Joshua N. Zingher, “The Effects of Lawn Signs on Vote Outcomes: Results from Four Randomized Field Experiments,” Electoral Studies 41 (2016): 143–150.

• Donald P. Green, Lionel Ong, Kylan Rutherford, and Aaron Schein, “Do Billboard Advertisements Increase Voter Turnout? A Large-Scale Field Experiment,” Quarterly Journal of Political Science 19, no. 3 (2024): 307–330.

• Donald P. Green, Alan S. Gerber, and David W. Nickerson, “Getting Out the Vote in Local Elections: Results from Six Door-to-Door Canvassing Experiments,” The Journal of Politics 65, no. 4 (2003).

• University of Arizona Eller College of Management, “Symbolic Support: Study Shows Campaign Merchandise Can Lead to ‘Political Slacktivism,’” July 23, 2025.

• Activate, “The Door Is Not the Goal: A Practical Canvassing System for Local Campaigns,” July 14, 2026.

• Activate, “When One Canvasser Taps ‘Yes,’ the Whole Campaign Should Know,” July 14, 2026.