Media, Spillovers, and Social Norms: The Electoral Impact of Anti-Far Right Protests in the 2002 French Election

We study the electoral impact of protesting against the far right by investigating the demonstrations held during the 2002 French presidential elections against far-right candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen. Instrumenting rally attendance with rainfall while factoring in that some municipalities never host protests, we find that larger protests reduced the number of votes for Le Pen and abstention, while increasing the number of votes for the incumbent president, Jacques Chirac. We find that the effect spread out beyond the municipalities that hosted protests and worked through media exposure. Using survey data, we show that protests reduced support for the policies advocated by Le Pen. Moreover, the positive effect on voting for Chirac resulted from right-wing voters switching from Le Pen to Chirac and left-wing voters not casting a blank ballot, implying that some voters voted expressively. Finally, we show that protests reduced the social desirability of voting for Le Pen.