Protest and incumbent support:evidence from a natural experiment in Ghana

How do protests shape incumbent support in lower-income democracies? Protests serve an accountability function by informing voters about government performance, but can also polarise opinion around pre-existing social and political identities. Leveraging an anti-government demonstration in Ghana that intersected an original survey in the field, we find that respondents interviewed immediately after the protest are more trusting and approving of the President. This effect is robust across multiple bandwidths, specifications, and placebo tests, and is driven by those who voted for the ruling party at the previous election. Our findings are consistent with theories of social identity and group threat, where supporters of an unpopular administration rally to their in-group’s defence. By contrast, the protest does nothing to shift opposition voters’ strongly negative prior beliefs. We show how anti-government protests can sometimes bolster incumbent support, extending the study of partisanship and identity politics to an understudied democratic context.