... forces behind electoral success: numbers, which favor the common people, and knowledge, which favors the elite. Electoral competition may lead parties to cater to the elite. We identify conditions under which an elite bias encourages entry with an anti-elite platform. Finally, we identify conditions...

...’ political positions are equivalent to election outcomes under full awareness of political issues and complete information about candidate’s political positions. We also show that this optimistic result depends crucially on the strength of electoral competition, the ability of candidates to microtarget...