Polls, the Press, and Political Participation: The Effects of Anticipated Election Closeness on Voter Turnout Leonardo Bursztyn Davide Cantoni Patricia Funk Noam Yuchtman* July 2018 Abstract Models of voting, including the canonical rational voter model, predict that voters are more likely to turn out when they anticipate a closer election. Yet, evidence of a causal effect of antic- ipated election closeness on voter turnout is limited. We exploit naturally occurring variation in the existence, closeness, and dissemination of pre-election polls to identify a causal effect of anticipated election closeness on voter turnout in Swiss referenda. Closer elections are as- sociated with greater turnout only when polls exist. Examining within-election variation in newspaper reporting on polls across cantons, we find that close polls increase turnout signifi- cantly more where newspapers report on them most. This holds examining only “incidental” exposure to coverage by periodicals whose largest audience is elsewhere. The introduction of polls had larger effects in politically unrepresentative municipalities, where locally available information differs most from national polls. Keywords: Voter turnout, media, polls JEL Classification: D72, P16 *Bursztyn: University of Chicago and NBER. Email:
[email protected]. Cantoni: University of Munich, CEPR, and CESifo. Email:
[email protected]. Funk: Universita` della Svizzera Italiana. Email:
[email protected]. Yuchtman: UC Berkeley, Haas School of Business, NBER, and CESifo. Email:
[email protected]. We would like to thank Ernesto Dal Bo,´ Devesh Rustagi and numerous seminar participants for very helpful comments. We thank Tillmann von Carnap, Raymond Han, Peter Hong, Vasily Korovkin, Aakaash Rao, Ann-Christin Schwegmann, and in particular Francesca Crotta, Felix Schoenenberger, and Christoph Wellig, for extraordinary research assistance.