Door-to-Door Campaigning in an Electoral Autocracy: Evidence from Hungary

Original

Door-to-Door Campaigning in an Electoral Autocracy: Evidence from Hungary

Gábor Simonovits, Ferenc Szucs, Bence Hamrak

Abstract

To what extent can opposition parties in hybrid regimes persuade voters? Although door-to-door campaigning is a frequently used technique by parties, we lack scholarly evidence on their effectiveness in mobilizing voters—especially in nondemocratic contexts. In electoral autocracies, on-the-ground campaigns might prove especially important due to the inequality between parties’ media access and resources. In this study, we estimate the impact of a Hungarian opposition party’s canvassing efforts for the 2019 European Parliament election relying on granular data and precise information about how party activists were allocated to geographical units. We find that the party’s campaign led to a roughly 1-percentage-point (about 15% of the standard deviation) increase compared to its previous vote share. At the same time, we also demonstrate that the campaign seemed to hurt other opposition parties instead of the governing party, highlighting the possible challenges that opposition parties face in electoral autocracies.