Local Newspapers and Ideological Accountability in US House Elections

Abstract

With Chapter 6, the volume shifts its focus to the role of the media in creating an informational environment that affects voters’ ability to hold elected officials accountable. Opening Part II, Brandice Canes-Wrone and Michael Kistner exploit variation across districts and over time in the congruence between local newspaper markets and House members’ districts. Using this variation, the authors estimate the effect of media coverage on the link between candidate ideology and election outcomes. For incumbents, who have track records of roll- call voting in Congress, differences in coverage only modestly affect the relationship between incumbent ideology and election outcomes. For challengers, however, reduced coverage is associated with a substantial reduction in both the penalty for ideological extremity and the reward for ideological moderation. The authors also find, consistent with the decline of local media and the rise of the internet, that the effect of local newspaper congruence may have decreased over time. Overall, media coverage and information are important in accountability, but in surprisingly subtle ways.