Social Mobilisation in Partisan Spaces

Time: 
16.09.2019 - 12:00 to 13:30
Location : 
A 5,6 Raum A 231
Type of Event : 
AB B-Kolloquium
Lecturer: 
Dr. Florian Foos
Lecturer affiliation: 
London School of Economics
Description: 

Three decades ago Huckfeldt and Sprague hypothesised that partisan context constrains information sharing between neighbours. We develop their theory to identify implications for campaign mobilisation. We argue that GOTV spillover effects should vary with the proportion of rival party supporters in a neighbourhood. We test this expectation of differential spillover between households that were either included or excluded, pre-random assignment, from a streetlevel GOTV experiment. We estimate neighbourhood party preferences based on targeting data, made available by the UK Labour Party. We find that GOTV spillover effects are larger for Labour supporters where fewer rival partisans reside in a neighbourhood. Rival partisans are mobilized in mixed neighbourhoods, where the probability of spillovers from mixed partisan households is higher. This paper extends Huckfeldt and Sprague’s theory, and demonstrates the importance of social dynamics for parties’ campaign strategies.