EconBase
← All papers

Information and voting: Evidence from Peru's 2026 presidential election

Marcelo Gallardo, Nicolas Velarde, Cristina Gutarra

arXiv 1 Jun 2026 · Econometrics

arXiv:2606.01687 · PDF · DOI · OpenAlex · Extracted main text

Abstract

We study how election-night flash estimates shape voting in Peru's fragmented 2026 presidential election. We exploit a natural experiment: on April 12, 2026, 187 polling tables across 13 voting centers failed to install, and the Jurado Nacional de Elecciones (JNE) extended voting for the affected $\approx\!55 000$ electors to Monday, April 13. These voters cast ballots after observing the Ipsos and Datum flash estimates; otherwise comparable Sunday voters did not. A Bayesian-updating model of multi-candidate plurality voting frames the analysis, yielding predictions about vote reallocation toward the three candidates the estimates rendered viable -- López Aliaga, Sánchez, and Nieto. We estimate treatment effects on candidate vote shares at both the acta level and the acta-weighted polling-station level, comparing treated and control locales de votación matched on pre-treatment covariates. How flash estimates reshape voting is of first-order importance for Peru, given its institutional instability and high political volatility over the past decade.

Citation extraction

42
references
67
in-text mentions
42
distinct cited
0
self-citations
13,702
main-text words

appendix boundary found by appendix_command · 81% of the source is main text. Read the extracted text to check this.

Most heavily cited references

The works this paper leans on most, across its whole bibliography — not restricted to papers in our corpus. Ranked by composite intensity, which combines how often a work is mentioned, how many sections mention it, and how much of that falls in the main text rather than the appendix.

ReferenceIntensityMentionsSectionsMain text
1Blackwell, David (1953) Equivalent Comparisons of Experiments1.00053100%
2Zubizarreta, José R. and Paredes, Ricardo D. and Rosenbaum, Paul R (2014) Matching for Balance, Pairing for Heterogeneity in an Observational Study of the Effectiveness of For-Profit and Not-for-Profit…0.92843100%
3Martinelli, César (2026) El Perú es un archipiélago0.73732100%
4Page, Lindsay C. and Lenard, Matthew A. and Keele, Luke (2020) The Design of Clustered Observational Studies in Education0.73732100%
5Visconti, Giancarlo and Zubizarreta, José R (2018) Handling Limited Overlap in Observational Studies with Cardinality Matching0.73732100%
6Barrenechea, Rodrigo and Vergara, Alberto (2023) Peru: The Danger of Powerless Democracy0.64441100%
7Gentzkow, Matthew and Kamenica, Emir (2017) Competition in Persuasion0.64422100%
8Infobae Perú (2026) Rafael López Aliaga cae a 10% en la intención de voto tras la elección de José Balcázar0.64422100%
9Kamenica, Emir and Gentzkow, Matthew (2011) Bayesian Persuasion0.64422100%
10Train, Kenneth E (2009) Discrete Choice Methods with Simulation0.64422100%

Showing the top 10 of 42 scored citations.