Television and electoral results in Catalonia

Abstract

The television channel TV3 has played a controversial role in the Catalan politics since its creation in the early eighties for its alleged partisan bias and support for the Catalan secessionist movement. This paper examines the impact on electoral results stemming from the exposure to TV3 exploiting its staggered expansion across Catalan municipalities in the 1980s. We find that the introduction of TV3 increased voter turnout in the 1984 Catalan parliamentary election, but it did not have a significant impact on the share of votes received by Convergència i Unió, the Catalan nationalist force that has been commonly associated with this channel since its foundation.