Irrelevant events affect voters' evaluations of government performance.

ABSTRACT: Does information irrelevant to government performance affect voting behavior? If so, how does this help us understand the mechanisms underlying voters' retrospective assessments of candidates' performance in office? To precisely test for the effects of irrelevant information, we explore the electoral impact of local college football games just before an election, irrelevant events that government has nothing to do with and for which no government response would be expected. We find that a win in the 10 d before Election Day causes the incumbent to receive an additional 1.61 percentage points of the vote in Senate, gubernatorial, and presidential elections, with the effect being larger for teams with stronger fan support. In addition to conducting placebo tests based on postelection games,

SUBMITTER: Healy AJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2919954 | biostudies-literature | 2010 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature