Information and Extremism in Elections

Raphael Boleslavsky and Christopher Cotton
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Raphael Boleslavsky: Department of Economics, University of Miami

No 2013-04, Working Papers from University of Miami, Department of Economics

Abstract: We show that informative political campaigns can increase political extremism and decrease voter welfare. We present a model of elections in which candidate ideology is strategically selected prior to a campaign which reveals information about candidate quality. Documented means by which campaigns can harm voters are not present in our model; special interest groups, fundraising, and biased or private information are not part of the analysis. Even under these optimistic assumptions, informative campaigns have negative consequences. Our results have implications regarding media coverage, the number of debates, and campaign finance reform.

Keywords: Campaigns; elections; persuasion; policy divergence; probabilistic voting (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 D83 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 32 pages
Date: 2012-11-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mic and nep-pol
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Information and Extremism in Elections (2015)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:mia:wpaper:2013-04

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