S. towns. “Fox News availability in 2000 appears to be largely idiosyncratic, conditional on a set of controls.” Using a data set of voting data for 9,256 towns, the study investigates if Republicans gained vote share in towns where Fox News entered the cable market by the year 2000. There was a significant effect of the introduction of Fox News on the vote share in Presidential elections between 1996 and 2000. “Republicans gained 0.4 to 0.7 percentage points” in the towns that broadcasted Fox News. Fox News also affected voter turnout and the Republican vote share in the Senate. These estimates imply that Fox News “convinced three to twenty-eight percent of its viewers to vote Republican”, depending on the audience measure. The Fox News effect could be a temporary learning effect for rational voters, or a permanent effect for non-rational voters subject to
S. towns. “Fox News availability in 2000 appears to be largely idiosyncratic, conditional on a set of controls.” Using a data set of voting data for 9,256 towns, the study investigates if Republicans gained vote share in towns where Fox News entered the cable market by the year 2000. There was a significant effect of the introduction of Fox News on the vote share in Presidential elections between 1996 and 2000. “Republicans gained 0.4 to 0.7 percentage points” in the towns that broadcasted Fox News. Fox News also affected voter turnout and the Republican vote share in the Senate. These estimates imply that Fox News “convinced three to twenty-eight percent of its viewers to vote Republican”, depending on the audience measure. The Fox News effect could be a temporary learning effect for rational voters, or a permanent effect for non-rational voters subject to