This paper asks whether a town‑hall style, deliberative campaign—where candidates discuss platforms with small groups of citizens—causally affects voting in a congressional election. Using a randomized experiment run with two national parties in the Philippines, the authors estimate whether active, discussion‑based outreach changes parties' vote shares relative to standard, passive campaign approaches.
Data and methods
The study implements a randomized experiment in cooperation with two national parties competing in a congressional election in the Philippines. The abstract frames the intervention as a town‑hall campaign that kept party platforms fixed while varying whether voters participated in deliberation or remained passive.
Main findings
The authors report that town‑hall style meetings increased parties' vote shares compared to the status quo. They also describe heterogeneous effects by income, education, and gender, and find that deliberative campaigns raised voter awareness on the issues the parties emphasized, with impacts on the votes of direct beneficiaries of the platform.
Randomized experiment with cooperating parties Effects reported on party vote shares Heterogeneous impacts by income, education, gender
