The Influence of Fox News on Elite Beliefs and Electoral Contestation in the U.S.

This Paper extends previous research with Kevin Arceneaux, Johanna Dunaway, Rene Lindstadt and Ryan Vander Wielen investigating how the intervention of the conservative Fox News Channel affects political calculations of U.S. elites. We have shown that members of Congress adjusted their voting behavior in response to the expansion of the Fox News Channel in the late 1990s. Responding to the presence of Fox News, members on both sides of the aisle cast more Republican votes in Congress and moved ideologically toward the right. Using a novel dataset with congressional district-level data on partisan news channel availability, we explore the beliefs of political elites and partisan activists given the expansion of Fox News. We expect the availability of Fox News makes elites perceive their electoral district to lean more conservative even as the composition of these districts does not change. We also show that the availability of partisan news channels affects the willingness of high quality candidates who have previously served in elected office varies with the presence of the conservative television news channel, shifting electoral outcomes in favor of Republicans during the early 2000s. (with Kevin Arceneaux, Temple University, arceneau@temple.edu; Johanna Dunaway, Texas A&M University, jdunaway@tamu.edu; and Ryan J. Vander Wielen, Temple University, rvwielen@temple.edu)