Media markets and municipal politics: how territorial congruence increases political participation at the local level

Abstract

This paper focuses on the effects of the local media market for turnout in municipal elections in Switzerland. Building on the information model of voter turnout, we posit that the exposure of citizens to locally relevant news is important for their probability to participate in local elections. Empirically, we focus on aggregate levels of turnout in recent local elections in 408 metropolitan municipalities in Switzerland. We find that newspaper audience in a municipality, as well as the congruence of newspaper markets with municipal territories both have positive effects on levels of turnout in municipal elections. The paper thereby contributes to an emerging literature showing that the role of the media is important for political participation at the local level, but also beyond.