Working Paper: CEPR ID: DP17648
Authors: Karsten Mueller; Carlo Schwarz
Abstract: This paper studies whether Donald Trump's role as host of the popular TV show "The Apprentice" increased his vote share in the 2016 and 2020 elections. We find a positive correlation between TV ratings of The Apprentice and the county-level Republican vote share, but this correlation vanishes once we control for pre-existing voting and NBC viewership patterns. This null effect is robust to different model specifications, measures of exposure to The Apprentice, and an extensive investigation of heterogeneous effects. Viewership of The Apprentice is also unrelated to Congressional election results and support for Trump in survey data or the Republican primaries.
Keywords: elections; entertainment tv; The Apprentice
JEL Codes: L82; D72
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| Viewership of The Apprentice (M59) | Republican vote share (D72) |
| Republican vote share in 2012 (D72) | Republican vote share in 2016 and 2020 (K16) |
| NBC viewership (Y10) | Republican vote share (D72) |
| Viewership of The Apprentice + controls (C29) | Republican vote share (D72) |
| Unobservables (D89) | Republican vote share (D72) |