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The Causal Effect of Polls on Turnout Intention: A Local Randomization Regression Discontinuity Approach

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 February 2021

Pablo Brugarolas  and
Luis Miller Open the ORCID record for Luis Miller [Opens in a new window]
Pablo Brugarolas
Affiliation:
Pompeu Fabra University, Department of Political & Social Sciences, C/ Ramon Trias Fargas 25-27, 08005Barcelona,  Spain. Email: pablo.brugarolas@upf.edu
Luis Miller*
Affiliation:
Spanish National Research Council (IPP-CSIC), C/ Albasanz 26, 28037Madrid,  Spain. Email: luis.miller@csic.es
*
Corresponding author Luis Miller
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Abstract

This letter reports the results of a study that combined a unique natural experiment and a local randomization regression discontinuity approach to estimate the effect of polls on turnout intention. We found that the release of a poll increases turnout intention by 5%. This effect is robust to a number of falsification tests of predetermined covariates, placebo outcomes, and changes in the time window selected to estimate the effect. The letter discusses the advantages of the local randomization approach over the standard continuity-based design to study important cases in political science where the running variable is discrete; a method that may expand the range of empirical topics that can be analyzed using regression discontinuity methods.

Keywords

local randomizationregression discontinuitypollsturnout
Type
Letter
Information
Political Analysis , Volume 29 , Issue 4 , October 2021 , pp. 554 - 560
Copyright
© The Author(s) 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Society for Political Methodology

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Footnotes

Edited by Jeff Gill

References

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