Presenter: Prof. Jason Todd. Assistant Professor of Political Science and Public Policy.

Discussant: Prof. Irina Soboleva. Assistant Professor of Behavioral Science.

Abstract: Under plurality rules, candidates can often win elections with something less than 50% of the vote. Over the last two decades, the Putin regime’s party — United Russia — has frequently leveraged this fact to win legislative elections against an often-fragmented opposition. In November 2018, political activist Alexei Navalny announced a targeted endorsement campaign called Smart Vote aimed at encouraging coordination amongst opposition-minded voters. By concentrating the vote on a single viable candidate in each district, Smart Vote raised the prospect of defeating UR candidates earning only 30—40% of the vote. We evaluate the effectiveness, persistence, and mechanism of the Smart Vote campaign (2019—2021) using three difference-in-differences approaches. We find that the Smart Vote campaign significantly increased district-level strategic coordination amongst opposition voters in predictable times and places, that these coordination effects outlasted the campaign itself, and that they worked by concentrating votes on Smart Vote endorsees.