Stop Making Voters Guess: What Reading Science Teaches Us About Persuasion Scripts

Your volunteer stares at the script: “We need to mobilize community stakeholders around comprehensive healthcare affordability initiatives.” They stumble. The voter on the other end asks, “What does that actually mean?” Another persuasion conversation dies before it starts.

Here’s what’s killing your scripts—and it has nothing to do with your volunteers’ commitment or intelligence.

The Science of (Not) Guessing

Research on reading comprehension reveals a crucial insight: skilled readers don’t guess words from context. They decode them directly, letter by letter, sound by sound. Poor readers, conversely, rely heavily on context clues and guessing—a strategy that fails them constantly.

When Dr. Keith Stanovich studied reading patterns, he discovered something counterintuitive: “the poorer readers, not the more skilled readers, were more reliant on context to facilitate word recognition.” Even skilled adult readers can correctly guess only 10-25% of unfamiliar words from context alone.

Now apply this to your voter scripts. When you load them with policy jargon and assume context knowledge, you force even educated voters into the position of poor readers—guessing at meaning instead of understanding directly.

What’s Failing in Your Scripts Right Now

Take a typical persuasion script: “As you know from the primary debates, our candidate’s position on infrastructure investment will create economic opportunities in underserved communities.”

Count the problems:

• “As you know”—assumes knowledge they likely don’t have
• “Infrastructure investment”—abstract jargon requiring translation
• “Economic opportunities”—vague buzzword that means nothing specific
• “Underserved communities”—policy-speak that obscures who you’re actually talking about

Your volunteer reads this word-for-word. The voter’s brain scrambles to guess meanings from context. The conversation stalls.

Writing Scripts That Actually Persuade

Transform that same message using reading science principles:

“Our candidate wants to fix the potholes on Main Street and repair the bridge by the high school. These projects will create 200 construction jobs that pay $25 per hour.”

What changed?

• Concrete over abstract: “fix the potholes” vs. “infrastructure investment”
• Specific locations: “Main Street” and “the bridge by the high school”
• Real numbers: “200 jobs” and “$25 per hour”
• Common words: Every term a fifth-grader would understand

Research from Yale’s Institution for Social and Policy Studies shows that voters respond to concrete, local examples 3x more effectively than abstract policy positions. When you eliminate the guessing, you amplify the persuasion.

The Decoder Test for Your Scripts

Before any volunteer reads your script, run this test:

1. The Fifth-Grader Standard: Would a smart 10-year-old understand every word?
2. Read Aloud: Do volunteers stumble anywhere? That’s where voters will tune out.
3. The Substitution Rule: Replace every three-syllable word where a one-syllable option exists.
4. Kill the Context Dependencies: Never reference “the bill,” “that issue,” or “as you know.”

Test your scripts with volunteers who aren’t policy experts. If they can read it smoothly without coaching, you’ve got something that works.

Making Every Word Count

Stop treating voter persuasion like a college seminar. Your volunteers have 30 seconds to connect. Every moment they spend translating jargon is a moment lost. Every time a voter has to guess at meaning, you lose persuasive power.

The science is clear: direct decoding beats contextual guessing every time. Write scripts that respect this reality.

What script transformation has worked for your campaign?