Naming the Gap: Informational Campaign on Female Underrepresentation and Vote Choice

Last registered on September 21, 2026
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Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Naming the Gap: Informational Campaign on Female Underrepresentation and Vote Choice
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0019674
Initial registration date
September 09, 2026

Initial registration date is when the trial was registered.

It corresponds to when the registration was submitted to the Registry to be reviewed for publication.

First published
September 21, 2026, 8:11 AM EDT

First published corresponds to when the trial was first made public on the Registry after being reviewed.

Locations

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Primary Investigator

Name
Amanda de Albuquerque
Affiliation
Rede A Ponte
Contact Primary Investigator

Other Primary Investigator(s)

Additional Trial Information

Status
On going
Start date
2026-07-01
End date
2026-12-31
Keywords
Electoral, Gender, Governance
Additional Keywords
JEL code(s)
Secondary IDs
Prior work
This trial does not extend or rely on any prior RCTs.
Abstract
Women hold just 18.5 percent of seats in the Brazilian Federal Senate. This project tests whether making that gap salient through a short digital ad, "Did you know women are more than 50 percent of the population but only 16 percent of Congress? Think about that when you vote," changes vote share for female Senate candidates in a live, competitive election. Prior evidence that this message shifts votes comes from the 2024 Brazilian municipal elections (De Albuquerque, Finan, Jha, Karpuska and Trebbi 2025, NBER Working Paper 33859); this project provides the first test of the same treatment in a federal, higher stakes race. In 200 municipalities in the state of Minas Gerais, municipalities are matched into pairs on the first principal component of local covariates and randomly assigned within pair, 100 to treatment and 100 to control. Treated municipalities receive a geo-targeted Instagram ad for one week, ending before the electoral silence period. The primary outcome is municipal-level vote share for female Senate candidates in the 2026 election.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
de Albuquerque, Amanda. 2026. "Naming the Gap: Informational Campaign on Female Underrepresentation and Vote Choice." AEA RCT Registry. September 21. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.19674-1.0
Sponsors & Partners

Partner

Name
Rede A Ponte
Type
ngo
URL
https://redeaponte.org/
Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
Treated municipalities receive a single digital ad on Instagram, delivered through Meta Ads Manager, informing residents that women hold only 18.5 percent of seats in the Brazilian Federal Senate. The ad text reads "Did you know women are more than 50 percent of the population but only 16 percent of Congress? Think about that when you vote." The ad targets adult Instagram users residing in the treated municipality, with no further segmentation by sex or age. It runs for one week, from September 25 to October 1, 2026, ending before the electoral silence period ahead of the October 4 general election. Control municipalities receive no advertising from this campaign.
Intervention Start Date
2026-09-25
Intervention End Date
2026-10-01

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
Municipal-level vote share for female candidates to the Federal Senate in the October 2026 general election.
Primary Outcomes (explanation)
Computed from official results published by the Tribunal Superior Eleitoral (TSE) after the election. For each municipality, we sum the valid votes received by all female candidates for Federal Senate and divide by the total valid votes cast for Federal Senate in that municipality.

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
Daily ad delivery metrics during the campaign flight, reach, impressions, and engagement rate. Heterogeneity of the treatment effect by baseline municipal covariates, including HDI, urbanization rate, and 2022 right-wing presidential vote share.
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)
Delivery metrics come directly from Meta Ads Manager reporting at the ad-set level for each treated municipality. Heterogeneity analysis interacts the treatment indicator with each baseline covariate, measured prior to randomization, in separate specifications.

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
The sample frame comprises 200 municipalities in Minas Gerais. Municipalities were matched into pairs by nearest neighbor on the first principal component of municipal covariates, then randomly assigned within pair, 100 to treatment and 100 to control. Treated municipalities receive the ad described above. Control municipalities receive no advertising.
Experimental Design Details
Not available
Randomization Method
Randomization was conducted in office using Stata, with a fixed random seed for reproducibility, not a public lottery.

Randomization Unit
Municipality (município).
Was the treatment clustered?
No

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
200 municipalities.
Sample size: planned number of observations
200 municipalities.
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
100 municipalities control, 100 municipalities treatment.
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
Supporting Documents and Materials
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
IRB Approval Date
IRB Approval Number
Analysis Plan