Political Conformity: Event-Study Evidence from the United States
Open accessAbstract
We propose that individuals are more politically active in more like-minded social environments. To test this hypothesis, we combine administrative data from the Federal Election Commission and the U.S. Postal Service. We identify 45,000 individuals who contributed to Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign and changed residences either before or after the 2012 election cycle.We examine whether living in an area with a higher share of Democrats causes higher contributions to Obama. We find that conformity effects are economically significant. Additionally, we conduct counterfactual analysis that shows that these effects are important for understanding geographic polarization.
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Norms tied to social contexts such as geographic locations influence political preferences and contribute to polarization.
“These and other studies327,328 highlight the ways in which norms tied to social contexts such as geographic locations influence political preferences and contribute to polarization329.”
From Cognitive–motivational mechanisms of political polarization in social-communicative contexts (2022) · cites this paper as [328]
Cites
Iyengar, S., Sood, G., & Lelkes, Y. (2012) · Public Opinion Quarterly · doi:10.1093/poq/nfs038 · Cited by 2,748 · see citing works
Fear and loathing across party lines: New evidence on group polarization
Iyengar, S., & Westwood, S. J. (2015) · American Journal of Political Science · doi:10.1111/ajps.12152 · Cited by 2,452 · see citing works
Gimpel, J. G., & Hui, I. S. (2015) · Political Geography · doi:10.1016/j.polgeo.2014.11.003 · Cited by 228 · see citing works
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Cognitive–motivational mechanisms of political polarization in social-communicative contexts
Jost, J. T., Baldassarri, D. S., & Druckman, J. N. (2022) · Nature Reviews Psychology · doi:10.1038/s44159-022-00093-5 · Cited by 276 · see citing works
- Authors
- Perez-Truglia, R.
- Affiliations
- University of California, Los Angeles
- Venue
- The Review of Economics and Statistics
- Publisher
- MIT Press - Journals
- Published
- 2018-03
- Volume
- 100
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 14-28
- ISSN
- 0034-6535 (ISSN-L)
- 1530-9142
- OpenAlex
- W3122233851
- Cited by
- 44
- References
- 3
- Citations by year
- 2026: 3 · 2025: 4 · 2024: 7 · 2023: 8 · 2022: 7 · 2021: 3 · 2020: 4 · 2019: 5 · 2018: 1 · 2017: 1 · 2014: 1
- FWCI
- 14.63
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- doi.org
- Locations
- The Review of Economics and Statistics (publishedVersion)
- SSRN Electronic Journal (acceptedVersion)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › Electoral Systems and Political Participation
- Social Sciences › Communication › Social Media and Politics
- Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Statistical and Nonlinear Physics › Opinion Dynamics and Social Influence
- Keywords
- political conformity, political action, campaign contributions, Barack Obama 2008 presidential campaign, counterfactual analysis
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