Voting after the Bombings: A Natural Experiment on the Effect of Terrorist Attacks on Democratic Elections
利用2004年马德里爆炸案发生在选举前三天这一自然实验，对比提前投票与事后投票的选民行为，发现恐怖袭击显著改变了选举结果。
Can terrorist attacks be timed to change the outcome of democratic elections? In this paper, we analyze the electoral impact of the terrorist attacks of March 11, 2004, in Madrid. Studies using individual level postelectoral survey data reach contradictory conclusions. We propose an alternative approach. Since the bombings took place only three days before the 2004 congressional election, we can find a control group of individuals who cast their vote before the terrorist attacks. The results indicate that the attacks had an important electoral impact, rejecting the hypothesis that the identity of the winner was unaffected by the terrorist attacks. © 2011 The President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.