Public Information and Electoral Bias

We present a theory of strategic voting that predicts elections are more likely to be close and voter turnout is more likely to be high when citizens possess better public information about the composition of the electorate. These findings are disturbing because they suggest that providing more information to potential voters about aggregate political preferences (e.g., through polls, political stock markets, or expert forecasts) may actually undermine the democratic process. We show that if the distribution of preferences is common knowledge, then strategic voting leads to a stark neutrality result in which the probability that either alternative wins the election is 12. This occurs because membersof the minority compensate exactly for their smaller group size by voting with higher frequency. By contrast, when citizens are symmetrically ignorant about the distribution of types, the majority is more likely to win the election and expected voter turnout is lower. Indeed, when the population is large and voting costs are small, the majority wins with probability arbitrarily close to one in equilibrium. Welfare is, therefore, unambiguously higher when citizens possess less information about the distribution of political preferences.

Majority-efficiency and Competition-efficiency in a Binary Policy Model

We introduce a general framework in which politicians choose a (possibly infinite) sequence of binary policies. The two competing candidates are exogenously committed to particular actions on a subset of these issues, while they can choose any policy for the remaining issues to maximize their winning probability. Citizens have general preferences over policies, and the distribution of preferences may be uncertain. We show that a special case of the model, the weighted-issue model, provides a tractable multidimensional model of candidate competition that can generate (i) policy divergence in pure and mixed strategies, (ii) adoption of minority positions, and (iii) inefficient outcomes.multidimensional policy, voting, citizen-candidate, normative analysis of political competition

Political Motivations and Electoral Competition: Equilibrium Analysis and Experimental Evidence

We study both theoretically and experimentally the complete set of Nash equilibria of a classical one-dimensional, majority rule election game with two candidates, who might be interested in power as well as in ideology, but not necessarily in the same way. Apart from obtaining the well known median voter result and the two-sided policy differentiation outcome, the paper uncovers the existence of two new equilibrium configurations, called 'one-sided' and 'probabilistic' policy differentiation, respectively. Our analysis shows how these equilibrium configurations depend on the relative interests in power (resp., ideology) and the uncertainty about voters' preferences. The theoretical predictions are supported by the data collected from a series of laboratory experiments, as we observe convergence to the Nash equilibrium values at the aggregate as well as the individual levels in all treatments, and the comparative statics effects across treatments are as predicted by the theory.Electoral competition, Power, Ideology, Uncertainty, Nash equilibrium, Experimental evidence

Polling in a proportional representation system

We study the effects of opinion polls on election results in proportional representation systems. Moderate voters have preferences over the vote shares received by the parties so that an agent’s optimal voting decision might depend on the other agents’ behavior. A voter’s information about other voters’ behavior can be improved through a series of opinion polls. We show that the mass of undecided voters decreases monotonically with the number of polls, but may not necessarily disappear. Voters who remain undecided have centrist ideologies. On average a series of polls brings the society closer to complete information even though specific polls may push the election result away from the complete information case

Do Polls create Momentum in Political Competition?

__Abstract__ We explore how public opinion polls affect candidates' campaign spending in political competition. Generally, polls lead to (more) asymmetric behavior. Under a majority rule there always exists an equilibrium in which the initially more popular candidate invests more in the campaign and thereby increases her lead in expectation: polls create momentum. When campaigning is very effective and the race is very close, a second type of equilibrium may exist: the trailing candidate outspends and overtakes his opponent. Regardless of the type of equilibrium, polls have a tendency to decrease expected total campaigning expenditures by amplifying ex-ante asymmetries between candidates and thus defusing competition. When candidates care also for their vote share in addition to having the majority, candidates' incentives crucially depend on the distribution of voters' candidate preferences

Private polling in elections and voter welfare

We study elections in which two candidates poll voters about their preferred policies before taking policy positions. In the essentially unique equilibrium, candidates who receive moderate signals adopt more extreme platforms than their information suggests, but candidates with more extreme signals may moderate their platforms. Policy convergence does not maximize voters' welfare. Although candidates' platforms diverge in equilibrium, they do not do so as much as voters would like. We find that the electorate always prefers less correlation in candidate signals, and thus private over public polling. Some noise in the polling technology raises voters' welfare

Private polling in elections and voter welfare

We study elections in which two candidates poll voters about their preferred policies before taking policy positions. In the essentially unique equilibrium, candidates who receive moderate signals adopt more extreme platforms than their information suggests, but candidates with more extreme signals may moderate their platforms. Policy convergence does not maximize voters' welfare. Although candidates' platforms diverge in equilibrium, they do not do so as much as voters would like. We find that the electorate always prefers less correlation in candidate signals, and thus private over public polling. Some noise in the polling technology raises voters' welfare.Elections Platform divergence Spending caps Political campaigns Polling