Partisan politics and election failure with ignorant voters

Faruk Gul and Wolfgang Pesendorfer ()

Journal of Economic Theory, 2009, vol. 144, issue 1, 146-174

Abstract: We analyze candidate competition when some voters do not observe a candidate's policy choice. Voters have a personality preference when both candidates offer the same policy. In equilibrium, the candidate with a personality advantage may get elected with a partisan policy even though his opponent's policy is preferred by all voters. The departure from the Downsian prediction is most pronounced when candidates have a weak policy preference and care mostly about winning the election. In that case, uninformed voters choose the candidate with the preferred personality even if electing this candidate implies a lower payoff on average.

Keywords: Electoral; competition; Information; aggregation; Voter; ignorance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (35)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jetheo:v:144:y:2009:i:1:p:146-174

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