17 Oct 2019Working Paper Summaries

Persuasion by Populist Propaganda: Evidence from the 2015 Argentine Ballotage

by Rafael Di Tella, Sebastian Galiani, and Ernesto Schargrodsky

This paper studies data generated prior to the 2015 Argentine presidential ballotage, when a government propaganda campaign was used to attack the opposition candidate and influence voter preferences. Results show the propaganda was persuasive.

Author Abstract

We study a propaganda campaign sponsored by the government against the main political challenger in the days preceding the 2015 Argentine presidential ballotage. Subjects in the treatment group watched an “ad” initially aired during soccer transmissions that was part of this campaign and were then asked about their political views. Relative to subjects in the control group, their declared preference for the challenger dropped by 6.5 percentage points. We find no effects of the three types of defenses employed by the challenger (a positive message unrelated to the “ad,” an answer to the accusations in the “ad,” and a counterattack). The propaganda effect is driven by women.