voTUM

Project Description

In an era of global information flows, can a foreign election shift voters' preferences on economic policy? Our study investigated whether voting behavior abroad, specifically Argentina's landmark 2023 presidential election, can influence the policy preferences of young Spanish voters. Building on Giorgio Malet's framework for cross-national social influence, we examined which conditions are truly necessary to trigger this effect in a globalized world. We found a surprising answer: the mere fact that an electorate somewhere voted a certain way may be enough to influence your preference, regardless of where in the world that happened.

Study Design

We surveyed 1,342 Spanish voters aged 18–24, randomly assigned to one of three groups. One group read about Javier Milei's 2023 election victory in Argentina (Full treatment group): his promise of short-term economic pain for long-term gain, and his striking popularity among young voters. A second group read the exact same text, but with all references to Argentina and Milei removed (Anonymized treatment group). A third group received no information at all (Control group). All participants then rated their preferences on five economic policy trade-offs between short-term comfort and long-term benefit. This design allowed us to isolate the effects of proximity, scope, and newsworthiness (as introduced by Giorgio Malet) independently.

Results

Less-informed voters, i.e., those without an economics background or strong interest in economic policy, were significantly influenced by both treatments. After reading about the foreign election, they became measurably less supportive of policies offering short-term gains at long-term cost. Crucially, this effect was just as strong when Argentina and Milei were anonymized as when they were named. More informed voters, by contrast, were unaffected by either treatment. The implication is striking: in today's globalized information environment, scope and newsworthiness alone may be sufficient to trigger cross-national social influence, proximity may not be a necessary condition.

Impact

These findings prompt us to think about democracy in the digital age. If less-informed voters can be meaningfully swayed by foreign electoral events, even anonymized ones, then the reach of political information has outpaced traditional geographic and cultural boundaries. For policymakers, this is a call to invest in political and economic education: a well-informed electorate is a more resilient one. For voters, it is a reminder that the more informed we are, the less we are swayed by outside factors when trying to vote for our desired outcomes.