How Trump triumphed: Multi-candidate primaries with buffoons

Micael Castanheira, Steffen Huck, Johannes Leutgeb and Andrew Schotter

Discussion Papers, Research Unit: Economics of Change from WZB Berlin Social Science Center

Abstract: While people on all sides of the political spectrum were amazed that Donald Trump won the Republican nomination this paper demonstrates that Trump's victory was not a crazy event but rather the equilibrium outcome of a multi-candidate race where one candidate, the buffoon, is viewed as likely to self-destruct and hence unworthy of attack. We model such primaries as a truel (a three-way duel), solve for its equilibrium, and test its implications in a laboratory experiment. We find that people recognize a buffoon when they see one and aim their attacks elsewhere with the unfortunate consequence that the buffoon has an enhanced probability of winning. This result is strongest amongst those subjects who demonstrate an ability to best respond suggesting that our results would only be stronger when the game is played by experts and for higher stakes.

Keywords: truel; political primaries; Trump (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C72 C92 D72 D74 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022, Revised 2022
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp, nep-pke and nep-pol
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/264469/1/ii20-307r.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: How Trump triumphed: Multi-candidate primaries with buffoons (2023)
Working Paper: How Trump Triumphed: Multi-Candidate Primaries with Buffoons (2023)
Working Paper: How Trump Triumphed:Multi-candidate Primaries with Buffoons (2020)
Working Paper: How Trump triumphed: Multi-candidate primaries with buffoons (2020)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:wzbeoc:spii2020307r

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Discussion Papers, Research Unit: Economics of Change from WZB Berlin Social Science Center Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().