Civic Duty and Political Advertising∗

Should voter awareness policies and get-out-the-vote movements be promoted? We address this question using a model of political advertising that incorporates both the mobilization and the persuasion aspects of advertising. An uncertainvoter model of two-candidate political competition is proposed, where candidates have fixed symmetric ideological positions and unknown qualities and can use political advertising, to inform voters about their qualities. By reducing or eliminating voters’ uncertainty about who the right candidate is, political advertising can both mobilize citizens and change their minds about which candidate to vote for. We characterize the equilibrium and conduct comparative static analysis allowing us to evaluate the effect of voter awareness policies or the activity of get-out-the vote movements on political advertising, turnout, and electoral outcomes. We find that, although successful at increasing voter turnout, they may lead to either an increase or a decrease in political advertising as well as in the probability that the candidate preferred by a majority of (all informed) citizens is elected. JEL Class: D72. ∗I am grateful to the editor and two referees for insightful comments that have led to a substantial improvement of the paper. I also thank Steve Coate, Helios Herrera, Arnaud Dellis, Stéphane Auray, Ming Li, as well as participants in the CIRPEE-UQAM conference on “Frontiers in Political Economy” (Montreal, 2008) and in the seminars at Carleton University and the Université Laval for helpful comments and suggestions. Financial support from FQRSC is gratefully aknowledged.