Political Information Cycles: When Do Voters Sanction Incumbent Parties For High Homicide Rates?∗
How voters hold governments to account depends upon when they consume information about the relevant incumbent party. If news consumption follows electoral cycles, short-term performance indicators in the news prior to elections may powerfully shape voting behavior, especially among voters that principally engage with politics around elections. Exploiting three sources of plausibly exogenous variation, I examine when Mexican voters sanction municipal incumbents for local violent crime. I show that voters indeed consume more news before local elections, and that homicides before such elections increase the salience of public security and reduce confidence in the mayor. Electoral returns confirm that pre-election homicide shocks substantially decrease the incumbent party’s vote share and re-election probability. However, such sanctioning is limited to mayoral elections and is barely impacted by longer-term homicide rates. Finally, I show that the punishment of homicide shocks requires local broadcast media stations, and is greatest among the least informed voters. These findings demonstrate the importance of when voters consume news about an under-studied performance...