What empirical studies exist measuring the electoral impact of online progressive groups like MoveOn since 2016?

1. What MoveOn itself claims and why it’s not the same as independent empirical evidence

MoveOn publishes detailed metrics—fundraising totals, counts of endorsed winners, and digital outreach scale—which it uses to claim electoral impact, for example reporting $4.5 million raised for candidates and that 52 MoveOn‑endorsed candidates won office in a recent cycle (including 34 district flips) and describing multi‑channel GOTV programs and A/B testing of contacts (MoveOn’s pages and research memo) ^{[1] [2]}. Those outputs are useful descriptive data but are organizational claims, not independent causal estimates: they document activity and correlated electoral outcomes but do not isolate MoveOn’s counterfactual contribution ^{[1] [2]}.

2. Broader empirical literature measures digital and organizational effects — but rarely isolates specific groups

Scholarly work since 2016 has investigated how social media, broadband access, and online mobilization affect turnout, polarization and vote choice, offering methodological tools that could be applied to groups like MoveOn (NBER working papers on social media and elections; studies of broadband effects on voting) ^{[3] [4]}. These studies establish that digital channels matter to political behavior but typically estimate platform or internet effects, not the downstream, net electoral impact of a named progressive group; they therefore inform plausibility without providing a MoveOn‑specific causal estimate ^{[3] [4]}.

3. Independent reports that come closest — coalition or sector studies, not single‑group causal inference

Initiatives such as the Movement Voter Project reference a "groundbreaking report" on independent political organizations (IPOs) influencing elections and governance and compile evidence on how IPOs operate; that report covers multiple organizations (many of which are MVP partners) but does not single out MoveOn in a way that produces a peer‑reviewed causal attribution for electoral outcomes ^[5]. Academic books and chapters chart the "MoveOn effect" historically (pre‑2016 work like Karpf’s book) and provide theory and case studies useful for interpretation, but these are not recent causal evaluations of MoveOn’s post‑2016 electoral impact ^[6].

4. Competing narratives, agendas and what they mean for interpreting the record

Organizational sources (MoveOn front pages and research memos) emphasize member power, GOTV tactics, and fundraising as proof of electoral influence—an advocacy frame that serves fundraising and recruitment ^{[1] [2]}. Watchdog or partisan profiles (e.g., InfluenceWatch) stress partisan alignment and donor ties, advancing a critical frame that questions MoveOn’s positioning within Democratic politics ^[7]. Academic studies of social media effects and digital organizing adopt neutral methodologies but typically speak to platforms or ecosystems rather than to MoveOn as a unique causal agent ^{[3] [4]}. Readers should treat organization‑produced counts as evidence of activity and plausibility, not definitive causal proof.

5. Bottom line and research gaps for future work

The provided sources show descriptive metrics from MoveOn and a body of academic work on digital political effects, but no independent, peer‑reviewed study in the supplied reporting that uses experimental or quasi‑experimental methods to isolate MoveOn’s net electoral impact since 2016 ^{[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]}. Closing that gap would require matched, district‑level designs, randomized mobilization experiments tied to MoveOn actions, or sophisticated causal inference leveraging exogenous variation in exposure—approaches present in the broader literature but not yet applied, in the material supplied, to produce a definitive MoveOn‑specific estimate ^{[3] [4]}.