Information and Strategic Political Polarization

We develop a model of electoral competition in which two purely opportunistic candidates select their policy position and invest in the quality of their platform. Policy positions are observed and, during the electoral campaign, the press reveals some information about quality. We demonstrate that when information is imperfect and quality endogenous, the Black-Downs median voter theorem fails to hold. For intermediate levels of information revelation, the unique equilibrium is one in which candidates propose policies that differ from the median voter’s bliss point. By contrast, convergence to the median voter still occurs when information is (almost) always or (almost) never revealed. Our results also show that a profit-maximizing press may collect more information than optimal from a social viewpoint. ∗Correspondence address: Micael Castanheira, ECARES, Université Libre de Bruxelles C.P.114, 50 av. Franklin Roosevelt, 1050 Bruxelles, Belgium, . We thank Enriqueta Aragonés, Isabelle Brocas, Benoit Crutzen, Per Krusell, Johan Lagerlöf, Howard Rosenthal, Loïc Sadoulet, Nicolas Sahuguet, Raphael Thomadsen, two anonymous referees, the editor, and seminar participants at the CEPR workshop in Hydra, the EEA conference in Venice, Columbia, Rochester and ULB for comments and discussions. Micael Castanheira is “Chercheur Qualifié du FNRS” and gratefully acknowledges their financial support.