Close Races Research Articles

Narrow Margins and Misinformation: The Impact of Sharing Fake News in Close Contests

This study investigates the impact of candidates disseminating fake news on voter behavior and electoral outcomes in highly competitive, partisan races. While the effects of fake news on electoral outcomes have been studied, research has yet to examine the impact of candidates’ strategic use of fake news in elections where it may have the greatest impact—close races. This research explores whether the use of fake news influences voter support, particularly among independent voters, in tightly contested elections. Through a conjoint survey experiment involving participants from Amazon MTurk, this study analyzes how variables such as race competitiveness, perceived risk of alienating independents, and the presence of partisan labels affect voter responses to candidates who spread misinformation. The findings indicate that while the competitiveness of a race does not significantly enhance support for candidates sharing fake news, the presence of partisan labels does. These results suggest that voter behavior in response to fake news is more closely tied to partisan identity than to strategic electoral considerations. This study highlights the complex dynamics of misinformation in electoral contexts and its implications for democratic processes.

A Theory of Small Campaign Contributions

Abstract Popular and academic discussions have mostly concentrated on large donors, even though small donors are a major source of financing for political campaigns. We propose a theory of small donors with a key novelty: it centres on the interactions between small donors and the parties’ fundraising strategy. In equilibrium, parties micro-target donors with a higher contribution potential (that is, richer and with more intense preferences) and increase their total fundraising effort in close races. The parties’ strategic fundraising amplifies the effect of income on contributions, and leads to closeness, underdog and bandwagon effects. We then study the welfare effects of a number of common campaign finance laws. We find that, due to equilibrium effects, those tools may produce outcomes opposite to intended objectives. Finally, we identify a tax-and-subsidy scheme that mutes the effect of income while still allowing donors to voice the intensity of their support.

Local elections do not increase local news demand

Abstract Anemic demand for local news has contributed to an industry crisis. We consider whether local elections, which highlight the ability of local television stations and newspapers to provide information that is unavailable from national news outlets, increase local media use. While we show these elections are a time of increased attention to local politics in the news and among the public, we also find local media outlets do not benefit from this when considering behavioral news use measures. Relative to news outlets in cities without an election, local television remains substantively unchanged during local elections. Newspaper website traffic is largely stable, although it falls slightly the month after an election. In both cases these differences are small, even when considering close races and those happening off the federal election cycle. This shows limits on the ability of salient local political events to motivate local news use.

Gender differences in re-contesting decisions: New evidence from French municipal elections

This paper studies differences across genders in the re-contesting decisions of politicians following electoral wins or defeats. Using close races in mixed-gender French local elections, we show that women are less likely to persist in competition when they lose compared to male runners-up, but are equally or more prone than male winners to re-contest when they win. Differences in observable characteristics or in the expected electoral returns of running again cannot fully account for these gender gaps in persistence. In contrast, evidence suggests that results are driven by behavioural explanations such as cross-gender differences in candidates’ attitudes toward competition, or by political parties behaving differently toward female and male candidates for a given electoral outcome. Additionally, we provide evidence that a woman’s victory encourages former female challengers to re-contest but does not trigger the entry of new female candidates.

Voter attention and electoral accountability

What sorts of policy decisions do voters pay attention to, and why? And how does rational voter attention affect the behavior of politicians in office? We extend the Canes-Wrone et al. (2001) model of electoral accountability to allow the voter to choose when to pay costly attention to learn the consequences of the incumbent’s policy. We find that the voter will pay the most attention in close races, when the instrumental value of information about incumbent performance is greatest. When the voter’s cost of attention is ‘intermediate,” she will pay different levels of attention to different policies, and generally pay more attention to an unpopular policy than a popular one. This asymmetric attention can improve accountability by giving a moderately strong incumbent an opportunity to be “caught in the act of being good” after choosing an unpopular policy. However, it can also harm accountability by leading a moderately strong incumbent to categorically avoid the unpopular policy to evade voter scrutiny. This negative effect can be sufficiently strong to harm the voter’s overall welfare, providing a novel rationale for why subsidizing information about government performance may unintentionally harm voters. Finally, we find that rational voter attention can never induce “fake leadership,” i.e., a moderately weak incumbent choosing an unpopular policy precisely because it draws more scrutiny, hoping that the voter discovers an accidental policy success.

Face-to-face: Three facial features that may turn the scale in close electoral races

When voters in political elections intend to vote for a candidate who represents their political interests, they cannot avoid being influenced by the visual appearance of the candidates. In fact, many political campaigns are dominated by billboard advertising that mainly focuses on politicians' face portraits. While extant research already showed that a candidate's visual appearance has an impact on electoral outcomes, the present research goes a step further and investigates which specific facial features increase or decrease a politician's likelihood of winning an election. Evaluating 17 facial features, we identified mouth width, the ratio of eye height/width, and eyebrow height as relevant predictors of electoral success. In particular, we find across a correlative study, an experimental study, and an analysis of German Federal Elections that a wide mouth and large eyes that extend vertically have a robust and coherent influence on the likelihood of getting votes. Thin eyebrows increase the likelihood of getting votes in our hypothetical voting scenarios but not in the analysis of real election data. Furthermore, we show that the effects of the mouth and the eyes are statistically mediated by perceived trustworthiness and perceived dominance. In terms of real-life relevance, our analysis suggests that these three facial features can make the difference in close races.

When the State Becomes Complicit: Mayors, Criminal Actors, and the Deliberate Weakening of the Local State in Colombia

Some politicians engage in relationships with criminal actors in pursuit of mutual interests. How does their rise to power affect state capacity? I focus on one of Colombia’s worst episodes of criminal politics to understand how the victory of paramilitary-friendly mayors impacted subnational taxation. Focusing on close races, I find that the victory of a paramilitary-friendly mayor in 2007 led to a substantive drop in property taxation in subsequent years. I argue that criminal collusion allows politicians and criminals to accumulate wealth and political power, but doing so requires them to deliberately undermine local state institutions. Indeed, the evidence suggests that municipalities governed by paramilitary-friendly politicians experienced a weakening of property rights, the worsening of local judicial institutions, and an alteration of the electoral playing field. Rather than a mere consequence of criminal collusion, state weakening is a politically strategic decision that serves the interests of both criminals and politicians.

Patterns of Campaign Finance in Pennsylvania's 1982 Legislative Election

This paper analyzes sources of contributions to virtually all candidates for Pennsylvania legislative office in 1982 who reported raising or spending more than $250 in any of six reporting periods. Contributions totaling nearly $7,750,000 were examined. Almost half came in amounts greater than $250. About 20% came from contributions of $50 or less from individuals: an equal proportion came from individuals giving between $50 and $250. Political Action Committee contributions received special scrutiny. About 27% of all money raised came from PACs, split evenly between Republicans and Democrats. But PAC money heavily favored incumbents by a three to one margin. In sharp contrast to political party contributions, PACs gave almost as much to candidates assured of victory or even unopposed as to those in close races. Labor PACs gave about as much as professional PACs, but were outspent two to one by business PACs. Overall, PACs accounted for nearly 37% of incumbents' receipts, suggesting their role is greater than in U.S. Congressional elections.

The politics of bailouts: Estimating the causal effects of political connections on corporate bailouts during the 2008\u20132009 US financial crisis

In 2008, as the financial crisis unfolded in the United States, the banking industry elevated its lobbying and campaign spending activities. By the end of 2008, and during 2009, the biggest political spenders, on average, received the largest bailout packages. Is that relationship causal? In this paper, I examine the effect of political connections on the allocation of funds from the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) to the US financial services industry during the 2008–2009 financial crisis. I find that TARP recipients that lobbied the government, donated to political campaigns, or whose top executives had direct connections to politics received better bailout deals. I estimate regression discontinuity design and instrumental variable models to uncover how election outcomes for politicians in close races affected the distribution of bailout funds for connected firms. The results do not imply that some banks were deliberately favored over others, just that favored banks benefited because of their proximity to the right people in power. If being politically connected matters in general, in times of crisis it matters even more.

Everything you should know about online voting

Online voting has been presented as the means to ensure faster, clearer results, mainly in close races. What complexities lie behind this claim? Will we ever replace paper-voting with a technological solution?

Conflict and Gender Leadership: Female Mayors in Colombia

Are female-led communities differentially affected by conflict? In this paper, I examine this question in the context of the Colombian conflict between 1997 and 2015. I exploit close races for the mayor’s office and find that municipalities where a female mayor was (narrowly) elected experienced a decrease in guerrilla attacks. This effect amounts to 60% of the average incidence during the sample period, is robust to various specifications, and shows both persistence in time and spatial spillovers. I find that the drop is not driven by ideological factors and cannot be explained solely by the partisan affiliation of either the elected mayor or the runner-up. Instead, I show that these female politicians have a differential set of negotiation and executive skills. Finally, I use unique and novel data on the spatial distribution of guerrilla units and the gender of their leaders to show that the effect is stronger in municipalities under the influence of a female guerrilla commander.

Campaigns influence election outcomes less than you think.

Campaigns have small effects but are built to win close races

Electoral Repercussions of a Pandemic: Evidence from the 2009 H1N1 Outbreak

In the aftermath of a large negative shock, such as an epidemic, retrospective voters evaluate the policy-makers' response and either punish or reward them in elections. A prominent concern during the on-going coronavirus pandemic has been whether politicians concerned about re-election have incentives to impose stringent mitigation measures that may carry high economic costs. On the other hand, voters might also react to the shock itself, no matter what the government does. To understand the effect of epidemic outbreaks on voting, we revisit the 2009 H1N1 outbreak in Mexico. Leveraging detailed administrative data and a difference-in-differences approach, we document a strong, negative relationship between the magnitude of the local epidemic outbreak and the governing party vote share in the 2009 congressional election. The electoral punishment depended on the magnitude of the peak of the epidemic curve but not on its timing, and it occurred independently of the remedial actions taken by the government. Furthermore, we find persistent effects in the 2012 election. Our results indicate that voters are acutely aware of epidemics, responding to them at the ballot box. The findings indirectly suggest that mitigation policies may be politically valuable even if they are costly for the economy.

The Delocalization of the Local Election

Local elections are no longer just influenced by, marketed toward, or relevant to only a small, geographically constrained electorate. Social media increasingly connect politics to publics that may extend beyond politicians’ or issues’ local constituencies. Every election—from Senator to alderperson—has been rendered accessible and relevant to broad individuals, organizations, and interests. Now, campaigns—particularly in close races or battleground areas—can canvas beyond the local level to seek donations, campaign volunteers, or to encourage local residents to vote. Social media have become venues to demonstrate a candidate’s likability with users, which are parlayed into local goodwill and electability. And foreign nationals and governments increasingly are using social media to spread disinformation or to otherwise sway local issues. Ultimately, what was once a city, county, state, provincial, or national election can now play out on a global stage through social media, with all of the subsequent influence and impacts. This article uses several geographically dispersed and representative examples to exemplify the delocalization of the local election, including Beto O’Rourke’s 2018 Senate Campaign (the US), the effect of nationwide social media popularity and interactivity on local election results (Taiwan and The Netherlands), and Russian influence in the 2016 Brexit Referendum (the UK). It concludes by calling for new understanding of what political involvement and political action may mean in a socially mediated society.

Electoral incentives and Public Employees’ Retirement Systems in Brazilian municipalities

This paper tests whether Brazilian mayors manipulate the funding policies of Public Employees’ Retirement Systems (PERS) owing to electoral motivations, using an unexplored dataset containing the statements of contributions prepared by municipal governments that we match to four nationwide elections. In Brazil, PERS are active in more than 2000 municipalities and must collect contributions from public-sector employees and local governments to meet their defined benefit promises. The institutional context provides variation in both reelection incentives and the funding of PERS that allows for credible estimation: term limits and close races generate exogenous variation in incentives, and the large increases in contribution rates mandated by a national pension reform, implemented by municipalities with different lags, provide the necessary variation in the funding practices. Overall, the regression discontinuity estimates support the hypothesis that mayors seeking reelection in competitive environments reduce the flows of funding to municipal PERS. Moreover, the results confirm the notion that while politicians have benefited from the changing legislation and a lack of supervision in the past, less room for strategic maneuvering has been open recently.

Political Turnover and the Performance of Local Public Enterprises

We study how political party turnover at the municipal level affects the economic performance of Italian Local Public Enterprises. To this end, we match data on municipal elections in Italy to the budget data of firms whose shares are owned by Italian municipalities. As political turnover and performance are likely to be jointly endogenous, we exploit the quasi-experimental nature of close electoral races to estimate the causal treatment effect. We find evidence that municipal party turnover disrupts investment and slows down productivity growth. At the same time, the probability of observing financial distress is larger. No significant effect can be established, on the other hand, in terms of profitability and employment growth. We link the effect of municipal party turnover to three mechanisms: first, the nature of close electoral races alters the incumbent party’s incentives to invest; second, turnover makes the appointment of new, less-experienced, board directors more likely; third, the new political leadership directly reduces the amount of resources transferred in order to signal its commitment to curb wasteful municipal expenditure. We finally set up a survival analysis, whose results show that municipal party turnover is associated to an increase in the likelihood to observe bankruptcy.

Is Incumbency a Barrier to Women's Entry in Politics?

This article investigates whether the persistence of incumbents hinders female access to political positions when incumbents are predominantly men. I exploit regression discontinuity from close electoral races in French municipalities to randomize the eligibility of incumbent mayors for reelection. Despite a context increasingly favorable to the election of women, I fi nd that the persistence of incumbents does not block female access to the position of mayor. I investigate the mechanisms and show that it is more difficult for a woman to replace a female incumbent than a male one. This is consistent with a backlash or stereotype threat e ffect penalizing women after a female incumbent.

Measuring re-election prospects across electoral systems: a general approach applied to Germany

This research note presents a general approach for measuring the electoral safety of individual MPs across electoral systems that is based on predicted re-election probabilities estimated from multilevel logistic regression models. In contrast to existing measures, this method yields estimates on an intuitive and readily comparable probability scale, captures the higher sensitivity of re-election prospects to electoral change in the range of close races, and can accommodate regional differences in context conditions such as volatility. The paper implements the approach for two archetypical electoral systems – first-past-the-post (FPTP) systems and closed-list proportional representation (PR) – and estimates re-election prospects for the FPTP and PR tiers of the German mixed electoral system in all Bundestag elections since 1957. While the empirical data presented here is mainly illustrative, the concluding section highlights various questions that future research can address with the new measure.

When Increased Turnout Matters: Simulating the Partisan Impact of Full Turnout in Senate and Gubernatorial Elections

What if everyone voted? There is consensus that increased turnout generally, but not always, benefits Democrats, but recent evidence suggests that it is unlikely to change election outcomes considering the paucity of close races. For the first time, we examine this question using gubernatorial races along with Senate races from 2008 and 2010, estimating the behavior of nonvoters based on individual‐level data from known voters. We find that the substantive effect of full turnout is understated, particularly in close gubernatorial races. As these races determine partisan control of executive branches, we demonstrate that full turnout would result in more politically meaningful changes than suggested in previous research focusing only on Senate or presidential elections. While the empirical consequences of increased turnout are well understood, our findings suggest that the substantive effects continue to be understated.Related Articles Stockemer, Daniel, and Stephanie Parent. 2014. “.” Politics & Policy 42 (): 221‐245. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/polp.12067/abstract Southwell, Priscilla. 2011. “.” Politics & Policy 39 (): 979‐996. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1747-1346.2011.00330.x/abstract Stockemer, Daniel. 2013. “.” Politics & Policy 41 (): 189‐212. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/polp.12012/abstract

Elected in a close race: Mayor’s characteristics and local public finances

Abstract The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the role of mayor’s characteristics (education, experience and gender) on fiscal indicators of Brazilian municipalities. We use regression discontinuity and the outcomes of close elections to identify causal effects for 2000, 2004 and 2008. We find evidence that experienced and educated mayors choose to devote a smaller fraction of the budget to current and personnel expenditures, and so they seem to be concerned with the quality of public finances. Moreover, educated mayors are better in negotiating discretionary transfers. Unfortunately, the results indicate that women and men elected in close races are different regarding education, and therefore we were not able to evaluate the effect of gender on fiscal indicators.