Small screen, big echo? Political persuasion of local TV news: evidence from Sinclair

How does partisan local TV news impact political outcomes and opinions? I exploit a sudden change in content by a major broadcasting company in the United States, Sinclair Broadcast Group, to include a conservative slant in the run-up to the 2004 election. Consequently, in counties which experienced this change in slant, I document a 4 to 5% point increase in the Republican presidential two-party vote share during the 2016 and 2020 election, following smaller gains of about 2% in the 2012 election. During this same period, there were also Republican gains in Congress, while there are no pre-trends before the change in content. The effect is concentrated among "isolated" counties---proxied by population decline and the share of native-born and the non-college-educated---in contrast to economic factors. Using a nationally representative survey of voters, I corroborate the county-level findings: the probability of voting for the Republican (presidential and congressional) candidate in 2016 also increased. Additionally, I note a rise in (self-declared) xenophobic attitudes and tolerance for racial inequality among non-college-educated respondents, yet no increases in support for traditionally Republican policy positions or populist rhetoric. A series of robustness checks rule out competing explanations.