Political Awareness, Microtargeting of Voters, and Negative Electoral Campaigning

Arbeitspapier

We study the informational effectiveness of electoral campaigns. Voters may not think about all political issues and have incomplete information with regard to political positions of candidates. Nevertheless, we show that if candidates are allowed to microtarget voters with messages then election outcomes are as if voters have full awareness of political issues and complete information about candidate's political positions. Political competition is paramount for overcoming the voter's limited awareness of political issues but unnecessary for overcoming just uncertainty about candidates' political positions. Our positive results break down if microtargeting is not allowed or voters lack political reasoning abilities. Yet, in such cases, negative campaigning comes to rescue.

Angaben zum Objekt

• Sprache: Englisch

Verweise und Beziehungen

• Erschienen in: Series: Working Paper ; No. 17-3

Klassifikation und Themen

• Klassifikation: Wirtschaft ; Noncooperative Games ; Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior ; Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design ; Capitalist Systems: Political Economy
• Thema: Electoral competition ; campaign advertising ; multidimensional policy space ; microtargeting ; dog-whistle politics ; negative campaigning ; persuasion games ; unawareness

Beteiligte, Orts- und Zeitangaben

• Ereignis: Geistige Schöpfung
• (wer): Schipper, Burkhard C. ; Woo, Hee Yeul
• Ereignis: Veröffentlichung
• (wer): University of California, Department of Economics
• (wo): Davis, CA
• (wann): 2017

Weitere Informationen

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/187493
• Letzte Aktualisierung: 10.03.2025, 11:43 MEZ