Abstract
We analyze candidate competition when some voters do not observe a candidate's policy choice. Voters have a personality preference when both candidates offer the same policy. In equilibrium, the candidate with a personality advantage may get elected with a partisan policy even though his opponent's policy is preferred by all voters. The departure from the Downsian prediction is most pronounced when candidates have a weak policy preference and care mostly about winning the election. In that case, uninformed voters choose the candidate with the preferred personality even if electing this candidate implies a lower payoff on average.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 146-174 |
Number of pages | 29 |
Journal | Journal of Economic Theory |
Volume | 144 |
Issue number | 1 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Jan 1 2009 |
All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes
- Economics and Econometrics
Keywords
- Electoral competition
- Information aggregation
- Voter ignorance