Due to a last-minute fight among the candidates, Vox, a party at the right end of the Spanish political spectrum, could not run in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, a relatively representative electoral constituency, in the general election of July 23, 2023. Since this fight was a power struggle within Vox unrelated to any fundamental in the constituency or ideological differences among the candidates, we can exploit this event as a quasi-natural experiment to measure the effects of new parties on electoral outcomes. Using three different but complementary research designs (matching, synthetic controls, and a triple-difference analysis), we get to the same main result: Vox's presence significantly increases votes for the right as a whole. The increase in votes for the right caused by Vox's presence is particularly strong in areas with high unemployment. The presence of Vox also reduces protest votes but, on the other hand, votes for the left are unaffected.
Authors
- Acknowledgements & Disclosure
- We are grateful to José Víctor Ríos-Rull who provided key insights into the quasi-natural experiment we exploit in this paper. Also, Alberto Abadie provided us with the most helpful insights into matching and synthetic panels. We also thank Dmitry Arkhangelsky, Carolina Arteaga, Álvaro Delgado-Vega, Luis Garicano, Roberto Ramos, Gustavo Ventura, Stan Veuger, and seminar participants at the Banco de España for their helpful comments and Diego Mestanza Macazana for outstanding research assistance. The opinions and analyses are the responsibility of the authors and, therefore, do not necessarily coincide with those of the Banco de España or the Eurosystem, nor those of the National Bureau of Economic Research.
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.3386/w32610
- Published in
- United States of America
Table of Contents
- Introduction 3
- Institutional Background and Data 9
- The Spanish Electoral and Party Systems 9
- Elections in the Canary Islands 11
- The July 23, 2023 Election 12
- Data 13
- Seat Allocation in Tenerife 16
- Research Design I: Matching 16
- Empirical Strategy 16
- Results 19
- A Counterfactual Seat Allocation 21
- Robustness 22
- Heterogeneity 25
- Taking Stock 27
- Research Design II: Synthetic Controls 27
- Empirical Strategy 27
- Results 28
- Robustness 30
- Research Design III: The Senate Election 31
- Empirical Strategy 31
- Results 33
- Counterfactuals and Interpretation 34
- Local Elections 36
- Local Elections in Spain 37
- Empirical Strategy 37
- Results 40
- Robustness 40
- Survey Data 41
- Other European Countries 42
- Conclusion 44
- Naming Convention 48
- The Electoral System for the Senate 49
- Details on the Data on Local Elections 50
- Details on the Survey Data 50
- Additional Tables and Figures 50
