Keep your Enemies Closer: Strategic Platform Adjustments during U.S. and French Elections

Rafael Di Tella, Randy Kotti, Caroline LePennec and Vincent Pons

No 18490, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research

Abstract: We study changes in political discourse during campaigns, using a novel dataset of candidate websites for U.S. House elections, 2002-2016, and manifestos for French parliamentary and local elections, 1958-2022. We find that candidates move to the center in ideology and rhetorical complexity between the first round (or primary) and the second round (or general election). This convergence reflects candidates’ strategic adjustment to their competitor, as predicted by the median voter theorem: Using an RDD, we show that candidates converge to the platform of opponents who narrowly qualified for the last round, as opposed to those who narrowly failed to qualify.

JEL-codes: D72 P00 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023-09
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Journal Article: Keep Your Enemies Closer: Strategic Platform Adjustments during US and French Elections (2025)
Working Paper: Keep your Enemies Closer: Strategic Platform Adjustments during U.S. and French Elections (2023)
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