Persuasive propaganda during the 2015 Argentine Ballotage

Abstract

We study a propaganda campaign sponsored by the Argentine government against the main political challenger in the days preceding the 2015 runoff presidential election. Subjects in the treatment group watched an “ad” that had been aired during soccer transmissions as part of this campaign. They were then asked about their vote intentions. Relative to subjects in the control group, their declared preference for the challenger drops by 6.5 percentage points for a persuasion rate of 11.2%. We find no effects of the three types of defenses employed by the challenger (a positive message unrelated to the “ad”, a reply to the accusations in the “ad”, and a counter-attack). The propaganda effect is driven by women.