Orphan Counties and the Effect of Irrelevant Information on Turnout in Statewide Races |
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Authors: | Keena Lipsitz Jeremy M. Teigen |
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Affiliation: | 1. Department of Political Science, Queens College , City University of New York , New York, New York, USA keena.lipsitz@qc.cuny.edu;3. Department of Political Science, Ramapo College , Mahwah, New Jersey, USA |
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Abstract: | Over 10% of the American electorate lives in counties served by out-of-state media because of the mismatch between media markets and state boundaries. Frequently, these “orphan” counties face a different information environment than others in their home state: they receive no news coverage and political advertising for their own statewide races, irrelevant information pertaining to candidates in the neighboring state who will not appear on their ballots, or both. With a combination of county-level, individual-level, and political advertising data, our analysis evaluates the effect of orphan county residency and irrelevant political information on political participation. Results indicate that orphan counties have lower turnout rates than non-orphan counties and that this difference is explained by lower levels of interest in the campaign stemming from exposure to irrelevant information. |
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Keywords: | political advertising turnout irrelevant information mobilization |
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