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 candidates’ political positions. Political competition is paramount for overcoming voters’ limited awareness of political issues but unnecessary for overcoming just uncertainty about candidates’ political positions. Our optimistic results break down if microtargeting is not allowed or voters lack political reasoning abilities. In such cases, negative campaigning comes to rescue, at least in the majoritarian model.
Political Awareness, Microtargeting of Voters, and Negative Electoral Campaigning
* We thank two anonymous reviewers and the editors of QJPS as well as Pierpaolo Battigalli, Oliver Board, Giacomo Bonanno, Jon Eguia, Ignacio Esponda, Boyan Jovanovic, Jean-François Laslier, Alessandro Lizzeri, Tymofiy Mylovanov, Joaquim Silvestre, Walter Stone, Thomas Tenerelli, and seminar participants at NYU Stern and participants at WEAI 2012 for helpful comments. Burkhard is grateful for financial support through NSF SES-0647811. An earlier version was circulated in 2011 under the title “Political Awareness and Microtargeting of Voters in Electoral Competition.”
Schipper BC, Woo HY (2019), "Political Awareness, Microtargeting of Voters, and Negative Electoral Campaigning". Quarterly Journal of Political Science, Vol. 14 No. 1 pp. 41–88, doi: https://doi.org/10.1561/100.00016066
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