Can Ambiguity in Electoral Competition be Explained by Projection Effects in Voters' Perceptions?

Thomas Jensen ()

No 05-25, Discussion Papers from University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics

Abstract: Studies in political science and psychology suggest that voters' perceptions of political positions depend on their personal views of the candidates. A voter who likes/dislikes a candidate will perceive his position as closer to/further from his own than it really is (projection). Clearly these effects should be most pronounced when candidate positions are ambiguous. Thus a generally well liked candidate will have an incentive to take an ambiguous position. In this paper we construct a simple model to see under which conditions this incentive survives in the strategic setting of electoral competition, even if voters dislike ambiguity per se.

Keywords: electoral competition; ambiguity; voter perception; cognitive balance; projection (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C72 D72 D83 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 15 pages
Date: 2005-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-mkt and nep-pol
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kud:kuiedp:0525

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