A mailshot in the dark? The impact of the UK government's lea fet on the 2016 EU referendum

Harry Pickard

No 2019004, Working Papers from The University of Sheffield, Department of Economics

Abstract: In this paper I explore the causal effect of exposure to the UK government’s mailshot on vote preference in the 2016 EU referendum. I find that exposure caused a drop in the probability of voting leave by 3 percentage points. The effect is stronger in individuals who were exposed to few other sources of referendum information. For instance, females and the risk averse were even less likely to vote leave after exposure. The effect was also larger for Conservative party supporters who consumed many other sources of information. The evidence is consistent with voters being liable to persuasion. On the mechanism, I show that exposed individuals experiencea “persuasion-through-knowledge” effect, which changes beliefs on topics of contention.

Keywords: Mass media; Mailshot; Leaflet; European Union; Brexit (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 J10 L82 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 55 pages
Date: 2019-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-eur and nep-pol
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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http://www.sheffield.ac.uk/economics/research/serps/articles/2019_004 First version, February 2019 (application/pdf)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:shf:wpaper:2019004

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