Keep Your Enemies Closer: Strategic Platform Adjustments during US and French Elections

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Di Tella, Rafael; Kotti, Randy; Le Pennec, Caroline; Pons, Vincent
• 署名单位: Harvard University; National Bureau of Economic Research; Institut Polytechnique de Paris; ENSAE Paris; Universite de Montreal; HEC Montreal; Centre for Economic Policy Research - UK
• 刊物名称: AMERICAN ECONOMIC REVIEW
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0002-8282
• DOI: 10.1257/aer.20231045
• 发表日期: 2025
• 页码: 2488-2528
• 关键词: voter turnout; political responsiveness; LINGUISTIC COMPLEXITY; MODEL; redistribution; CONSEQUENCES; preferences; franchise; CHOICE; web

摘要

We study changes in political discourse during campaigns, using a novel dataset of candidate websites for US House elections, 2002-2016, and manifestos for French parliamentary and local elections, 1958-2022. We find that candidates move to the center in ideology and rhetorical complexity between the first round (or primary) and the second round (or general election). This convergence reflects candidates' strategic adjustment to their opponents, as predicted by Downsian competition: Using an RDD we show that candidates converge to the platform of opponents who narrowly qualified for the last round as opposed to those who narrowly failed to qualify. (JEL D72, D83, D91)