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Do Interactions with Candidates Increase Voter Support and Participation? Experimental Evidence from Italy

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  • Enrico Cantoni
  • Vincent Pons

Abstract

We test whether politicians can use direct contact to reconnect with citizens, increase turnout, and win votes. During the 2014 Italian municipal elections, we randomly assigned 26,000 voters to receive visits from city council candidates, canvassers supporting the candidates' list, or to a control group. While canvassers’ visits increased turnout by 1.8 percentage points, candidates’ had no impact on participation. Candidates increased their own vote share in the precincts they canvassed, but only at the expense of other candidates on the list. This suggests that their failure to mobilize nonvoters resulted from focusing on securing the preferences of active voters.

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  • Enrico Cantoni & Vincent Pons, 2020. "Do Interactions with Candidates Increase Voter Support and Participation? Experimental Evidence from Italy," NBER Working Papers 27433, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:27433
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    Cited by:

    1. Cantoni, Enrico & Gazzè, Ludovica & Schafer, Jerome, 2021. "Turnout in concurrent elections: Evidence from two quasi-experiments in Italy," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 70(C).
    2. Vincent Pons & Vestal Mcintyre, 2020. "Ground work vs. social media: how to best reach voters in French municipal elections?," Post-Print halshs-02515651, HAL.
    3. Nunnari, Salvatore & Galasso, Vincenzo & Nannicini, Tommaso, 2020. "Positive Spillovers from Negative Campaigning," CEPR Discussion Papers 14312, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    4. Baum, Charles L. & Owens, Mark F., 2023. "Does personal door-to-door campaigning influence voters? Evidence from a field experiment," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 105(C).
    5. Vincenzo Galasso & Tommaso Nannicini, 2016. "Persuasion and Gender: Experimental Evidence from Two Political Campaigns," CESifo Working Paper Series 5868, CESifo.
    6. Galasso, Vincenzo & Nannicini, Tommaso, 2016. "Persuasion and Gender: Experimental Evidence from Two Political Campaigns," CEPR Discussion Papers 11238, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    7. Galasso, Vincenzo & Morelli, Massimo & Nannicini, Tommaso & Stanig, Piero, 2024. "The Populist Dynamic: Experimental Evidence on the Effects of Countering Populism," CEPR Discussion Papers 18826, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    8. Galasso, Vincenzo & Morelli, Massimo & Nannicini, Tommaso & Stanig, Piero, 2022. "Fighting Populism on Its Own Turf: Experimental Evidence," CEPR Discussion Papers 17380, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    9. Vincent Pons & Vestal Mcintyre, 2020. "Ground work vs. social media: how to best reach voters in French municipal elections?," Institut des Politiques Publiques halshs-02515651, HAL.
    10. Tabellini, Marco & Calderon, Alvaro & Fouka, Vasiliki, 2021. "Racial Diversity and Racial Policy Preferences: The Great Migration and Civil Rights," CEPR Discussion Papers 14318, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.

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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • C93 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Field Experiments
    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior

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