Targeted Campaign Competition, Loyal Voters, and Supermajorities

Pierre Boyer and Kai Konrad

Working Papers from Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance

Abstract: We consider a two-candidate campaign competition in majoritarian systems with many voters. Some voters are loyal, some can be influenced by campaign spending. Own loyalty with respect to a candidate is the voter's private information. Candidates simultaneously choose their campaign budgets and how to allocate them among the voters. We show that a candidate who has a group of loyal voters wins with a higher probability, but chooses the same expected budget size as the rival candidate. The equilibrium distributions of campaign spending target all voters equally in expectation, but target some voters more than others ex post.

Keywords: Campaign competition; vote buying; supermajorities; targeting; flexible budgets; asymmetric information. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 D78 D82 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 35 pages
Date: 2014-08
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 (2)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Targeted campaign competition, loyal voters, and supermajorities (2017)
Working Paper: Targeted Campaign Competition, Loyal Voters, and Supermajorities (2017)
Working Paper: Targeted campaign competition, loyal voters, and supermajorities (2017)
Working Paper: Targeted campaign competition, loyal voters, and supermajorities (2017)
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