How Do Voters Respond to Information? Evidence from a Randomized Campaign

51 Pages Posted: 28 Apr 2013 Last revised: 19 May 2023

See all articles by Chad Kendall

Chad Kendall

University of Southern California

Tommaso Nannicini

Bocconi University - Department of Economics; IZA Institute of Labor Economics

Francesco Trebbi

University of California, Berkeley - Haas School of Business; National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)

Multiple version iconThere are 2 versions of this paper

Date Written: April 2013

Abstract

Rational voters update their subjective beliefs about candidates' attributes with the arrival of information, and subsequently base their votes on these beliefs. Information accrual is, however, endogenous to voters' types and difficult to identify in observational studies. In a large scale randomized trial conducted during an actual mayoral campaign in Italy, we expose different areas of the polity to controlled informational treatments about the valence and ideology of the incumbent through verifiable informative messages sent by the incumbent reelection campaign. Our treatments affect both actual vote shares at the precinct level and vote declarations at the individual level. We explicitly investigate the process of belief updating by comparing the elicited priors and posteriors of voters, finding heterogeneous responses to information. Based on the elicited beliefs, we are able to structurally assess the relative weights voters place upon a candidate's valence and ideology. We find that both valence and ideological messages affect the first and second moments of the belief distribution, but only campaigning on valence brings more votes to the incumbent. With respect to ideology, cross-learning occurs, as voters who receive information about the incumbent also update their beliefs about the opponent. Finally, we illustrate how to perform counterfactual campaigns based upon the structural model.

Suggested Citation

Kendall, Chad and Nannicini, Tommaso and Trebbi, Francesco, How Do Voters Respond to Information? Evidence from a Randomized Campaign (April 2013). NBER Working Paper No. w18986, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2257177

Chad Kendall (Contact Author)

University of Southern California ( email )

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Tommaso Nannicini

Bocconi University - Department of Economics ( email )

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IZA Institute of Labor Economics

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Francesco Trebbi

University of California, Berkeley - Haas School of Business ( email )

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National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) ( email )

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