Ideological spillovers across the Atlantic? Evidence from Trump’s presidential election

Joan Costa-Font and Martin Ljunge

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: Ideological spillovers refer to the modification of an individual's core beliefs after learning about other people's beliefs. We study one specific international ideological spillover, namely, the effect of the unexpected election of a United States (US) president (Donald Trump on the 9 th of November 2016), who openly questioned the so-called ‘core liberal consensus’, on European's core political beliefs. Using a regression discontinuity design (RDD) around the election event, we show that the Trump presidential election (TPE) gave rise to a ‘backlash effect’. That is, it steered core European beliefs in two specific domains, making Europeans more favourable to (i) globalisation and (ii) international mobility (about 10% change in the overall Likert scale range of the statement that immigrants contribute to a country). Contrasting with the hypotheses of ‘belief contagion’, we do not find evidence that TPE steered illiberal beliefs. Furthermore, TPE improved (deteriorated) the view Europeans had of their own country (the United States).

Keywords: political shocks; belief formation; information spillovers; backlash effect; pluralistic ignorance; Trump presidential election; political beliefs; the social formation of beliefs (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 F50 P16 Z10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 20 pages
Date: 2023-02-28
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-pol and nep-soc
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published in European Journal of Political Economy, 28, February, 2023, 76. ISSN: 0176-2680

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Related works:
Journal Article: Ideological spillovers across the Atlantic? Evidence from Trump's presidential election (2023)
Working Paper: Ideological Spillovers across the Atlantic? Evidence from Trump's Presidential Election (2022)
Working Paper: Ideological Spillovers Across the Atlantic? Evidence from Trump’s Presidential Election (2022)
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