Internet Availability, Political Information, and Voting: Evidence from Brazil

Click here to download the most recent version. This paper examines the effects of Internet availability on voting outcomes of the 2010 presidential elections in Brazil. It exploits the variation in Internet provision across municipalities and the variation in the importance of online advertising relative to tra-ditional media across candidates. I use elements of the cost of deploying network cables that depend on geographical constraints and pre-existing infrastructure to account for endogenous Internet provision. Consistent with the hypothesis that more information about small parties/candidates – the ones with restricted availability of space in tradi-tional media – could be obtained online, I find a positive and relatively large effect of Internet availability on their vote shares. Moreover, individual-level results suggest that small parties/candidates benefited from information disseminated online via political advertisement