Information and Voting: Evidence from the Global Rollout of Cellular Networks

• In Event: Poster Session: New Research in Information Technology and Politics & Canadian Politics
  In Poster Session: Poster Session: New Research in Information Technology & Politics

Abstract

Did the introduction and expansion of cell phone technology increase voter coordination in low and middle income democracies? In theories of voter coordination, information availability is a key prerequisite for voters to understand the political landscape and shift their voting strategy accordingly. Cell phone technology represents an expansion of information access that has become unparalleled in its ubiquity and affordability in many emerging markets. The introduction of cell phone coverage to a constituency should then lead to an increase in voter coordination. We test this theory in a number of low and middle income democracies (Ghana, India, Malawi, Mexico, and Zambia) across multiple elections. We leverage variation in the timing of cell phone coverage across similar municipalities laying on major highways to identify the effect of expansion of coverage on voter coordination. We look at a number of measures of voter coordination including the second-to-first ratio, the percentage of wasted votes, and the total number of candidates in each race. We use two way fixed effects to predict how the percentage of cell coverage in each constituency predicts voter coordination. Contrary to what many theories of voter coordination would predict, preliminary findings suggest that cell phone coverage did not increase voter coordination.

Authors

• Nick Brouwer, University of California, Merced

• Aditya Dasgupta, University of California, Merced

• Tesalia Rizzo, University of California, Merced