Compulsory Voting and TV News Consumption

Abstract

Do people acquire more information when they are encouraged to participate in elections? This paper presents empirical evidence on the effects of compulsory voting laws over the consumption of TV news. In Brazil, the law determines that literate citizens over the age of eighteen are subject to a number of penalties if they don't attend the ballots. This allows us to identify the causal effect of being under a compulsory voting regime on information acquisition. We find that compulsory voting has a significant and substantial positive impact on the probability of an individual to watch Brazil's main TV newscast. Additionally, the effect is stronger for poor voters and for individuals who have neutral evaluations of the incumbent president. Our results are restricted to young voters who just turned eighteen and are robust to different polynomials and bandwidth lengths.

Does Compulsory Voting Affect How Voters Choose? A Test Using a Combined Conjoint and Regression Discontinuity Analysis

“…3 Regarding immediate motivation, three studies that use randomized experiments (Großer & Seebauer, 2016; Miles & Mullinix, 2021; Shineman, 2018) find a swift effect of the requirement to participate on political sophistication. Exploiting age-based variation in the application of compulsory voting in Brazil, Bruce and Costa Lima (2019) uncover a prompt effect of the voting obligation on information gathering.…”

Quem iria votar se não fosse obrigado? O papel do interesse pela política no comparecimento eleitoral no Brasil

“…A prática do voto compulsório no Brasil tem sido tema de interesse crescente de estudos empíricos publicados nos últimos anos, com preocupações diferentes: variação das taxas de comparecimento eleitoral nos estados brasileiros (Power, 2009); efeitos do voto obrigatório sobre o voto aleatório (voto em um candidato, não importa quem ele seja, apenas para cumprir a lei e evitar punições) nas eleições de 2018 (Freire & Turgeon, 2020); a participação eleitoral de estudantes com idade próxima aos 18 anos nas eleições de 2010 (Leon & Rizzi, 2014; e os efeitos do voto compulsório no consumo de informação dos canais de televisão em 2013 e 2015 (Bruce & Lima, 2017).…”

Is Voting Really Habit-Forming and Transformative? Long-Run Effects of Earlier Eligibility on Turnout and Political Involvement from the UK

“…Despite the strong face validity of the transformative voting hypothesis, the evidence for downstream effects of voting is decidedly mixed. Among the sparse research able to infer causality (as summarised in Holbein et al, 2021), some studies show clear short-term effects of voting, for instance on political interest and knowledge (Braconnier et al, 2017;Shineman, 2018;Bruce and Lima, 2019), partisanship (Meredith, 2009), and on non-electoral political participation (Khoban, 2019). Mullainathan and Washington (2009) also find that past vote eligibility leads to a polarization of political opinions that persists two years later, at the next election.…”