Pandering and electoral competition

We study an election with two perfectly informed candidates. Voters share common values over the policy outcome of the election, but possess arbitrarily little information about which policy is best for them. Voters elect one of the candidates, effectively choosing between the two policies proposed by the candidates. We explore under which conditions candidates always propose the voters’ optimal policy. The model is extended to include strategic voting, policy-motivated candidates, imperfectly informed candidates, and heterogeneous preferences.