We present a model of electoral competition with endogenous platforms and campaign spending where the division voters between impressionable ideological is also depends on parties’ strategic platform choices. Our approach results in tractable that provides interesting comparative statics effect recent technological advancements. For instance, we can accommodate new justification behind well-doc...

Positive effects of campaign spending on electoral outcomes have been found in several comparative, multiparty contexts (e.g. Britain, France, Japan, and Australia) but very few of these systems use proportional representation (PR). The handful of studies that have examined spending effects in multi-party elections (e.g. Brazil, Flanders) have found that incumbent spending is no less effective ...

A survey of 16-21 year old people in Somerset was undertaken to find out about their sexual behaviour prior to mounting a local education campaign on AIDS. A representative sample of 400 people, using quota sampling in 40 randomly selected electoral wards, completed a schedule structured part self administered questionnaire. Of these, 371 (92%) considered themselves heterosexual. Nearly half (4...

As in 1999 and 2003, the 2007 elections for Scottish local councils were held on the same day (May 3 rd ) as the Scottish Parliament elections. This was despite the fact that in the interim the Arbuthnott Commission, set up to report on elections in Scotland, had firmly recommended the ‘decoupling’ of the two sets of elections (Commission on Boundary Differences and Voting Systems, 2006, pp. 48...

This paper shows how political parties differentiate to reduce electoral competition. Two parties choose platforms in a unidimensional policy space, and then candidates from these parties compete for votes in a continuum of constituencies with different median voters. Departing from their parties’ platforms is costly enough that candidates do not take the median voter’s preferred position in ev...

Despite a pervasive presence in politics, lying has not traditionally played a role in formal models of elections. In this paper we develop a model that allows candidates in the campaign stage to misrepresent their policy intentions if elected to office, and in which the willingness to lie varies across candidates. We find that candidates more willing to lie are favored, but that this advantage...

Given the persistence of public doubts about the integrity of ballot secrecy, which depress turnout, two prior experiments have shown precise evidence that both official governmental and unofficial mobilization campaigns providing assurances about ballot secrecy increase turnout among recently registered nonvoters. To assess whether these findings replicate in other political settings, we descr...

Studies that examine whether voters make informed decisions on direct legislation and whether direct legislation enhances civic engagement presume a basic awareness of ballot propositions, yet little is known about why some ballot propositions are more widely known than others. Despite the fact that research on awareness of ballot propositions and political awareness focus on individual factors...

Vote-buying, i.e., gifts given to voters before the elections in exchange for their votes, is a frequent practice during electoral campaigns in many parts of the world. However, in the presence of secret ballots, it is not clear whether and how vote-buying drives voting behavior. This paper proposes a simple model of vote-buying with two candidates where (i) the level of enforcement of vote-buy...