This article studies the importance of entertainment TV for the selection of political leaders in the context of an important case study: Donald Trump's win in the 2016 presidential election and his previous role as host of the popular TV show “The Apprentice.” We find a positive correlation between TV ratings of and the county-level Republican vote share in 2016, but this correlation vanishes once we control for pre-existing voting and NBC viewership patterns. This null result is robust to different model specifications, measures of exposure to , and an extensive investigation of heterogeneous effects. Viewership of is also unrelated to Congressional election results, as well as support for Trump in survey data and the Republican primaries. These findings highlight the context-dependent importance of television for political leadership.

中文翻译：

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从学徒到总裁？娱乐电视和美国大选


本文以唐纳德·特朗普 (Donald Trump) 在 2016 年总统选举中获胜以及他之前担任热门电视节目《学徒》(The Apprentice) 的主持人为背景，研究了娱乐电视对于政治领导人选拔的重要性。我们发现 2016 年电视收视率与县级共和党选票份额之间存在正相关关系，但一旦我们控制了预先存在的投票和 NBC 收视率模式，这种相关性就会消失。这个无效结果对于不同的模型规格、暴露测量以及异质效应的广泛调查是稳健的。收视率也与国会选举结果以及调查数据和共和党初选对特朗普的支持率无关。这些发现凸显了电视对于政治领导力的视环境而定的重要性。