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Political Advertising and Voting Intention: Evidence from Exogenous Variation in Ads Viewership

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  • Ruben Durante

    (ECON - Département d'économie (Sciences Po) - Sciences Po - Sciences Po - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, CEPREMAP - Centre pour la recherche économique et ses applications - ECO ENS-PSL - Département d'économie de l'ENS-PSL - ENS-PSL - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres)

  • Emilio Gutierrez

    (ITAM - Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México)

Abstract

Mexico's campaign law assigns TV and radio ads to parties according to their vote share in the previous election, and mandates the time of the day at which ads are aired to be determined randomly. We exploit this arguably exogenous variation in viewers' exposure to political ads by different parties and longitudinal electoral survey data to estimate the effect of ads on voting intentions during Mexico's 2012 presidential campaign. We find that political ads on both radio and TV have a positive, significant and sizeable effect on voting intentions. This effect is short-lived (about two weeks), and is stronger in the early weeks of the campaign. Ads tend to have no significant impact on voters' knowledge of candidates' political message, and to be more effective at convincing individuals that are more educated, and those who voted for the party in the past. Taken together these findings suggests that ads do not influence voters by conveying new information but that other mechanisms of persuasion, cantered around ads' non-informative content, may be at work.

Suggested Citation

  • Ruben Durante & Emilio Gutierrez, 2014. "Political Advertising and Voting Intention: Evidence from Exogenous Variation in Ads Viewership," SciencePo Working papers Main hal-03460274, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:spmain:hal-03460274
    Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://sciencespo.hal.science/hal-03460274
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    2. Edeinmene Arede & Majority Oji, 2022. "Influence of Radio Broadcasting on Political Participation among People of South-South Nigeria," Studies in Media and Communication, Redfame publishing, vol. 10(2), pages 25-38, December.
    3. Anjali Morar & Tinashe Chuchu, 2015. "To Vote or Not To Vote: Marketing Factors Influencing the Voting Intention of University Students in Johannesburg," Journal of Economics and Behavioral Studies, AMH International, vol. 7(6), pages 81-93.
    4. Abel François & Michael Visser & Lionel Wilner, 2016. "Using Political Financing Reforms to Measure Campaign Spending Effects on Electoral Outcomes," CESifo Working Paper Series 6232, CESifo.
    5. Seerat Sohal & Harsandaldeep Kaur, 2019. "Communicating with Voters on YouTube: Content Analysis of the Relationship Between Advertisement Message Characteristics and Viewers’ Responses," Management and Labour Studies, XLRI Jamshedpur, School of Business Management & Human Resources, vol. 44(1), pages 17-35, February.

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