Replication Study on "Coordination and Bandwagon Effects: How Past Rankings Shape the Behavior of Voters and Candidates" by Riako Granzier, Vincent Pons and Clemence Tricaud (2023)

The study by Granzier et al. (2023) shows that a candidate's ranking in polls and previous elections can strongly influence how political parties and voters coordinate their actions. Specifically, candidates who rank first in the initial round of elections are more likely to stay in the race and win the second round than those who rank second. This pattern also holds true when comparing candidates ranked second versus third and third versus fourth. To verify these findings, we replicated all the regression tables and figures using regression discontinuity design as in the original study. We also conducted additional tests by analyzing different subsets of the data, removing extreme cases based on "election year" and "district identifier." Our results mostly confirm the original findings, with only slight changes in the strength and significance of the effects. For example, the effect of being ranked first instead of second on the likelihood of continuing to the second round remains consistent across all tests. However, the effect of being ranked third instead of fourth on winning the second round varies more, especially when extreme cases are removed, which aligns with the original study's observation that very few candidates ranked third or fourth in the first round go on to win in the second round.