Gubernatorial Elections Change Demand for Local Newspapers

• Date: 01 January 2022
• Published date: 01 January 2022
• Author: Allison M. N. Archer,Joshua P. Darr
• DOI: 10.1177/1532673X211046252
• Subject Matter: Articles

2022, Vol. 50(1) 52 –66

https://doi.org/10.1177/1532673X211046252

American Politics Research

© The Author(s) 2021

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DOI: 10.1177/1532673X211046252

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Article

Local newspapers connect Americans to their government by

reporting on the politicians and bureaucratic officials in their

states and communities, and serve as the most powerful

mechanism of accountability in local government (Hopkins

& Pettingill, 2018). However, local newspapers are in a

period of steep decline, with economics and technology usu-

ally accorded the blame (Grieco, 2020; Hindman, 2015).

Since 2006, advertising revenues are down 66.4%, the news-

paper workforce fell by 47%, and weekday circulation

decreased by nearly 40% (Pew Research Center, 2018). A

recent and growing literature shows how severely this trend

endangers American democracy: healthy local newspapers

improve civic engagement (Shaker, 2014), increase voter

turnout (Gentzkow et al., 2011), encourage more candidates

to run for office (Schulhofer-Wohl & Garrido, 2013), increase

knowledge about candidates (Hayes & Lawless, 2015, 2018)

and elected officials (Lyons et al., 2013), and even improves

policy outcomes such as spending on public works projects

(Snyder & Strömberg, 2010) and air pollution (Campa,

2018). Given the substantial benefits of local news and its

precarious status, it is more important than ever to under-

stand which factors influence the demand for local news,

including those that go beyond economics and technology.

We focus on the role of political factors, which are often

overlooked in studies of news consumption.

Some political outcomes can shift demand for local news-

papers: presidential election results stimulate demand for

local newspapers affiliated with the losing party compared to

those of the winning party, likely due to anxiety-fueled

information-seeking produced by losing (Archer, 2018).

While elections for the U.S. House do not affect newspaper

circulations (Archer, 2018), it is unclear whether and how the

results of more prominent state and local elections influence

demand for local news. Gubernatorial campaigns, for exam-

ple, frequently spend millions of dollars in support of their

candidate, and these election results matter greatly for policy

outcomes (Mulvihill, 2018). This suggests voters will not

just pay attention to state-level elections but also monitor

events in their aftermath using local news outlets. If consum-

ers react to wins and losses in the governor’s office by shift-

ing their local news consumption, and if partisans’ reactions

are asymmetrical, those choices could influence the local

news environment and alter that most powerful pathway to

elite monitoring, accountability, and representation. Does

demand for local newspapers change in reaction to wins and

losses by state-level executives—and do these demand

dynamics operate similarly for Republican, Democratic, and

independent news sources?

We isolate the influence of gubernatorial elections on news

consumers’ behavior using original datasets that capture the

1046252

APRXXX10.1177/1532673X211046252American Politics ResearchArcher and Darr

research-article

2021

1University of Houston, TX, USA

2Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, USA

Corresponding Author:

Allison M. N. Archer, Department of Political Science, University of

Houston, 3551 Cullen Boulevard, Room 436, Houston, TX 77204-

3011, USA.

Email: amarcher3@uh.edu

Gubernatorial Elections Change

Demand for Local Newspapers

Allison M. N. Archer1 and Joshua P. Darr2

Abstract

How do partisans react when their candidate wins or loses a gubernatorial election? Previous work shows that when

parties win presidential elections, demand for their affiliated local newspapers decreases relative to the losing party’s

newspapers. However, it is unclear if this negative link extends beyond presidential races into state-level elections. To test

this relationship, we analyze demand for partisan and non-partisan newspapers in Virginia and New Jersey—two states that

hold off-cycle gubernatorial elections with no competition from federal elections—from 1933 to 2005. We find demand for

local newspapers associated with the winning party declines after gubernatorial elections compared to demand for other

newspapers. The results also shed light on whether (and which) winning partisans are disengaging completely or shifting their

consumption to independent newspapers. Taken together, our study suggests that state-level elections significantly influence

local newspaper consumption and adds valuable local context to our understanding of the political dynamics of news demand.

Keywords

gubernatorial elections, local newspapers, news media demand