15:30 - 17:45
Friday-Panel
Chair/s:
Şeyma Topçu
Discussant/s:
Theres Matthieß
Meeting Room J

Şeyma Topçu, Mert Moral
When Policies Become Irrelevant: The Effect of Polarized Attitudes on Vote Switching

Fabio Ellger, Hanno Hilbig, Sascha Riaz, Philipp Tillmann
Local Newspaper Decline and Political Polarization.

Josep Maria Comellas Bonsfills
Affective polarization and support for populist parties

Daniel Sandu, Costin Ciobanu
Affective polarization and elections. How do (strong) partisans react?
Local Newspaper Decline and Political Polarization.
Fabio Ellger 1, Hanno Hilbig 2, Sascha Riaz 2, Philipp Tillmann 3
1 Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
2 Harvard University
3 Analysis Group

How does consolidation in the market for local news affect electoral polarization? A growing literature recognizes that political polarization partially stems from changes in the media landscape. While a range of countries have experienced marked declines in the number of local news outlets as well as news readership, there is little work that explores how local news exits affect polarization. To study this relationship, we draw on a novel panel data set of the coverage areas of all German newspapers between 1979 and 2009. Using a difference-in-differences design, we demonstrate that newspaper exits increase electoral polarization, as measured by a common polarization scale as well as by the vote share of parties further from the center. We propose that voters consume more national news when local news outlets exit. As a result, voters are increasingly exposed to politics at the national level, where decision making is more ideologically charged and less consensual than at the local level.