Imperfectly informed voters and strategic extremism∗

We analyze an electoral competition model with two offi ce motivated candidates where a) one of the two candidates enjoys a non-policy advantage and b) voters use shortcuts (e.g. interest-group/media endorsements) to infer the policy platforms of the competing candidates. That is, voters have imperfect information about the candidates’policy proposals: they do not observe the exact policy proposals of the candidates but only which candidate offers the most leftist/rightist platform. In the unique equilibrium of the game the behavior of the two candidates tends to maximum extremism, but it may converge or diverge depending on the size of the advantage. For small values of the advantage candidates converge to the extreme policy most preferred by the median and for large values of the advantage candidates strategies diverge: each candidate specializes in a different extreme policy. By introducing an increasing measure of informed voters the equilibrium strategies gradually become more moderate and in the limit we converge to the original perfect information model in which candidates locate arbitrarily close to the median voter. That is, an increasing number of voters who decide which candidate to support using shortcuts constitutes a strong centrifugal force in electoral competition driving candidates platforms towards the extremes.