Arbeitspapier

Political Awareness, Microtargeting of Voters, and Negative Electoral Campaigning

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.

Language
Englisch

Bibliographic citation
Series: Working Paper ; No. 17-3

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

Event
Geistige Schöpfung
(who)
Schipper, Burkhard C.
Woo, Hee Yeul
Event
Veröffentlichung
(who)
University of California, Department of Economics
(where)
Davis, CA
(when)
2017

Handle
Last update
10.03.2025, 11:43 AM CET

Data provider

This object is provided by:
ZBW - Deutsche Zentralbibliothek für Wirtschaftswissenschaften - Leibniz-Informationszentrum Wirtschaft. If you have any questions about the object, please contact the data provider.

Object type

  • Arbeitspapier

Associated

  • Schipper, Burkhard C.
  • Woo, Hee Yeul
  • University of California, Department of Economics

Time of origin

  • 2017

Other Objects (12)