Does lawmaker behavior influence electoral outcomes? Observational studies cannot elucidate the effect of legislative proposals on electoral outcomes, since effects are confounded by unobserved differences in legislative and political skill. We take advantage of a unique natural experiment in the Canadian House of Commons that allows us to estimate how proposing legislation affects election out...

Reports on the state of the horserace and analysis of the candidates’ strategies are pervasive themes in news coverage of campaigns. Various explanations have been suggested for the dominance of strategy-oriented over hard news. The most frequently identified factors are the length of the modern campaign, the built-in conflict between journalists and campaign operatives, and the pressures of th...

We model electoral competition between two parties in a winner-take-all election. Parties choose strategically first their platforms and then their campaign spending under aggregate uncertainty about voters’ preferences. We use the model to examine why campaign spending in the United States has increased at the same time that politics has become more polarized. We find that the popular explanat...

We present a theory of campaign spending in elections. In our model we show that in the absence of competitive electoral pressure the timing of campaign spending will simply on the relative benefits of spending money early vs. late in the campaign. When the candidate have to compete for funds, and their ability to raise funds depends on their standing in the polls, candidates are forced to incr...

We model electoral competition between two parties in a winner-take-all election. Parties choose strategically first their platforms and then their campaign spending under aggregate uncertainty about voters’ preferences. We use the model to examine why campaign spending in the United States has increased at the same time that politics has become more polarized. We find that the popular explanat...

Framing effects and bounded rationality imply that election campaigns may be an important determinant of election outcomes. This paper uses a two-party setting and simple game theoretic models to analyse the strategic interaction between the parties’ campaign decisions. Alternations of power emerge naturally, even if both electoral preferences and party positions remain constant.

Framing effects and bounded rationality imply that election campaigns may be an important determinant of election outcomes. This paper uses a two-party setting and simple game theoretic models to analyse the strategic interaction between the parties’ campaign decisions. Alternations of power emerge naturally even if both electoral preferences and party positions remain constant.

Campaign literature is a ubiquitous feature on the American electoral landscape. Candidates distribute written materials for the sole purpose of persuading voters to vote for them instead of for another candidate. The information a candidate includes in a piece of campaign literature, as well as how it is presented, can reveal his or her perception of the criteria citizens use when deciding for...

Most political scholars agree that organized groups play a key role in modern democracy. One aspect of special interest politics that has caught the attention of both academic researchers and the public at large, especially in the US, are campaign contributions. Candidates to various federal and state o¢ ces receive monetary donations from various corporations and pressure groups.1 What do cand...

The Dynamic Political Economy of Support for Barack Obama During the 2008 Presidential Election Campaign In recent years, students of voting behavior have become increasingly interested in valence politics models of electoral choice. These models share the core assumption that key issues in electoral politics typically are ones upon which there is a widespread public consensus on the goals of p...