Place-Based Campaigning: The Political Impact of Real Grassroots Mobilization

Bischof, Daniel; Kurer, Thomas

Abstract

Generations of research have incrementally identified the circumstances under which electoral campaigns matter. Direct, interpersonal contact within local networks is commonly seen as conducive to campaign impact but empirical evidence is scarce due to demanding data requirements. We advance the literature by studying the Movimento Cinque Stelle, an important challenger party in Italy, which followed the unusual practice of coordinating all political activities on a public online platform. We webscraped the entire event history of the Movement’s more than 1,000 local branches with over 200,000 geocoded political activities to study the effect and mechanisms of their campaign against the 2016 constitutional referendum – a watershed moment in Italian politics. Relying on regression, matching, and instrumental variable models, we demonstrate substantial campaign effects. Our results indicate that social networks amplify the effectiveness of a campaign while highlighting both the continued relevance and the particular potency of place-based political mobilization.