Replication Data for: The Extraordinary Effect of Religious Sect Endorsements on Vote Choice: Evidence from Iglesia ni Cristo's "Vote as One" Teaching

Sects and strict denominations are growing more rapidly and retaining members better than mainstream religions. To what extent do they influence vote choice? I investigate whether the Iglesia ni Cristo (INC), a religious sect in the Philippines, can compel all members to “vote as one” and support a full ticket of endorsed candidates. Using a triple difference identification strategy, I show that the municipal-level vote-shares of INC-endorsed national candidates are unit elastic with respect to the share of INC voters across municipalities. Conventional low-information rationality models of voting cannot fully explain this. But augmented with social voting in which actions of other group members inform the objective function of voters, a voting model with religious sect endorsements can produce extremely large behavioral responses. These findings have implications on policy as well as on our understanding of strict religions’ influence on politics.