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Television and voting in Catalonia

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  • Ivan Mauricio Duran

    (Departament d'Economia Aplicada, Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona)

Abstract

To what extent can be electoral results in Catalonia explained by the exposure of individuals to television? This paper sheds light on this question by looking into the effect of TV3 on two distinguished political outcomes in the 1984 Catalan Parliamentary election. The outcomes of interest are voter turnout and the vote share of Convergència i Unió (CiU), one of the strongest political forces in Catalonia who has mainly driven the channel since its creation. We resort to a natural experiment based on the geographically differentiated expansion of TV3 in Catalonia. Using a Difference-in-Differences Kernel matching method, we found that the introduction of TV3 caused an increase both in the voter turnout and the CiU vote share in the 1984 Catalan parliamentary elections.

Suggested Citation

  • Ivan Mauricio Duran, 2016. "Television and voting in Catalonia," Working Papers wpdea1603, Department of Applied Economics at Universitat Autonoma of Barcelona.
    • Handle: RePEc:uab:wprdea:wpdea1603
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Media; Elections; Voting behaviour; Natural experiment; Difference-in-Differences;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • L82 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Services - - - Entertainment; Media
    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • C99 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Other

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