Does Advertising Exposure Affect Turnout?

We identify an exogenous source of variation in exposure to campaign advertising in the 2000 presidential election, based on residence in battleground states. If exposure to campaign advertising makes a potential voter significantly more likely to vote, then we should see significantly greater turnout in battleground states. We do not. This result is robust to several specifications and evident in a natural experiment consisting of New Jersey residents. Conditional on existing campaign targeting strategies, campaigns do not affect the turnout decisions of the voters we study.