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Do Free Food and Beverages Bring People to the Political Meeting? The Survey Experiment of Attendance-Buying

In this article, we explore a phenomenon we call attendance-buying. Specifically, we investigate the case of buying the attendance of voters at political rallies. Politicians and political parties promise voters certain rewards if they come to listen to them at political meetings. Often, these rewards can be food or valuable prizes. We conducted a survey experiment to discover what effect this form of attendance-buying has in Czech municipalities with up to 1000 inhabitants. We focused on small municipalities, where such a strategy can be effective because of the small number of candidates compared to large towns. We found that the effect of promising free food and drinks for attending a rally surprisingly did not manifest. With this finding, we contribute to and extend upon the theme of vote-buying. Our research also has practical implications, as local-level candidates do not have to make these food and drink expenditures because interested citizens will attend political rallies regardless of these offers.