Projection Effects and Strategic Ambiguity in Electoral Competition

Thomas Jensen ()

No 07-12, Discussion Papers from University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics

Abstract: Theories from psychology suggest that voters' perceptions of political positions depend on their non-policy related attitudes towards the candidates. A voter who likes (dislikes) a candidate will perceive the candidate's position as closer to (further from) his own than it really is. This is called projection. If voters' perceptions are not counterfactual and voting is based on perceived policy positions then projection gives a generally liked candidate an incentive to be ambiguous. In this paper we construct and analyze a formal model to investigate under which conditions this incentive survives in the strategic setting of electoral competition, even if voters dislike ambiguity per se.

Keywords: electoral competition; ambiguity; voter perception; cognitive consistency; projection (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 D83 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 22 pages
Date: 2007-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm and nep-pol
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.econ.ku.dk/english/research/publications/wp/2007/0712.pdf/ (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Projection effects and strategic ambiguity in electoral competition (2009)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kud:kuiedp:0712

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Discussion Papers from University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics Oester Farimagsgade 5, Building 26, DK-1353 Copenhagen K., Denmark. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Thomas Hoffmann ().