A theory of communication in political campaigns
Series
School of Economics and Political Science, Department of Economics
Type
discussion paper
Date Issued
2013-02-22
Author(s)
Abstract
In this paper I develop a formal theory of campaign communications. Voters have priors about the quality of candidates' policies in the different policy issues and about the issues' relative importance. Candidates spend time or money (TV ads, public speeches, etc.) in an effort to influence voters' decision at the ballot. Influence has two simultaneous effects: (i) it increases the quality of the policy in the issue as perceived by the voters through policy advertising and (ii) it makes the issue more salient through issue priming, thereby increasing the issue's perceived importance. A strategy is an allocation of influence activities to the different issues or topics. I show conditions under which candidates' strategies converge or diverge, which issues - if any - will dominate the campaign, and under what conditions candidates are forced to focus on issues in which they are perceived to be weak. I develop a set of novel testable predictions and discuss the model's predictive power by example of the 2008 presidential campaign in the U.S.
Language
English
Keywords
Multi issue campaign
campaign communication
policy advertising
issue priming
HSG Classification
contribution to scientific community
Refereed
No
Number
2013-02
Start page
51
Subject(s)
Division(s)
Eprints ID
224541
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Name
150713 atoc.pdf
Size
465.03 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
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