Electoral Spillovers in an Intertwined World: Brexit Effects on the 2016 Spanish Vote

Abstract

The Brexit vote took place three days before the June 26, 2016, Spain’s parliamentary elections, in which anti-systemic parties performed worse compared to the previous elections (December 2015) despite the optimistic predictions of the pre-election polls and the surge in the support for anti-systemic parties that was taking place elsewhere (Hobolt and de Vries 2016). We split the Spanish votes in local ones (casted after Brexit) and postal ones (casted before Brexit) and — by employing a differences-in-differences model a la Montalvo (2011) — we provide causal evidence suggesting that the electoral performance of the anti-systemic parties deteriorated due to the uncertainty and fear of destabilization caused to the Spanish electorate by the Brexit vote.

Keywords: Brexit, Spanish Elections, Electoral Spillovers, Natural Experiment, Uncertainty, Anti-Systemic Parties

JEL Classification: D72, F00, F50