Television and Voter Turnout
نویسنده
چکیده
I use variation across markets in the timing of televisions introduction to identify its impact on voter turnout. The estimated e¤ect is signi cantly negative, accounting for between a quarter and a half of the total decline in turnout since the 1950s. It is robust to a range of controls and alternative speci cations, and interacts intuitively with county characteristics. I argue that substitution away from other media with more political coverage provides a plausible mechanism linking television to voting. As evidence for this, I show that the entry of television in a market coincided with sharp drops in consumption of newspapers and radio, and in political knowledge as measured by election surveys. I also show that both the information and turnout e¤ects were largest in o¤-year congressional elections, which receive extensive coverage in newspapers but little or no coverage on television. Finally, I look at television markets which are fragmented across many congressional districts. This should reduce television coverage of congressional races, making the e¤ect on turnout more negative, but have no e¤ect on coverage of presidential races. Although rst-stage evidence on information is inconclusive, the e¤ect of television on turnout varies with the number of districts as predicted. JEL classi cation: D72, P16, L82 Keywords: television, media, information, voting. I thank Gary Becker, David Cutler, Ed Glaeser, Claudia Goldin, Emir Kamenica, Larry Katz, Bob Margo, Julie Mortimer, Emily Oster, Ariel Pakes, Jesse Shapiro, Andrei Shleifer, Bob Topel, and many seminar participants for their contributions to this project. I am grateful to Chicago GSB and the Social Science Research Council for nancial support.
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