Allocating Communication Time in Electoral Competition

Alexandre Arnout () and Gaëtan Fournier ()
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Alexandre Arnout: Aix-Marseille Univ., CNRS, AMSE, Marseille, France, https://www.amse-aixmarseille.fr/en/members/arnout
Gaëtan Fournier: Aix-Marseille Univ., CNRS, AMSE, Marseille, France, https://www.amse-aixmarseille.fr/en/members/

No 2520, AMSE Working Papers from Aix-Marseille School of Economics, France

Abstract: Political campaigns influence how voters prioritize issues, which in turn impacts electoral outcomes. In this paper, we study how candidates’ communication shapes which issues prevail during the campaign, through which mechanisms, and to what extent. We develop an electoral competition model with two candidates, each endowed with exogenous platforms and characteristics. Candidates allocate strategically their communication time across two issues to maximize their expected vote shares. We find that when one candidate holds similar comparative advantages on both issues, the disadvantaged candidate communicate on a single issue to saturate the campaign with one topic and then increases the randomness of the election. The advantaged candidate has the opposite incentive and communicate on both issues, creating an asymmetry in the campaign. We show that in some cases, the campaign can become entirely centered on a single issue.

Keywords: electoral competition; Communication time; Priming (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C72 D72 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 25 pages
Date: 2025-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-gth and nep-mic
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