Abstract
Recent developments in information and communication technologies allow candidates for office to engage in sophisticated messaging strategies to influence voter choice. We consider how access to different technologies influence the choice of policy platforms by candidates. We find that when candidates can \textit{microtarget} messages to specific voter groups, platforms are more likely to be inefficient. In particular, when candidates can run targeted campaigns, they commit to projects that benefit small groups even when the social cost of these projects outweigh their benefits. Our results are robust to negative advertising.
Highlights
The advent of widespread internet use and rapidly improving computing power have fundamentally changed the tools available to advertisers
This paper investigates how improvements in message targeting by candidates influence political competition
We model microtargeting as candidates having the ability to target different groups of voters with different messages
Summary
The advent of widespread internet use and rapidly improving computing power have fundamentally changed the tools available to advertisers. When messages are beyond the candidates’ control, candidates commit to socially efficient platforms, as in the full-information benchmark. We consider issue selection, i.e., we let each candidate control which message about his platform reaches the voters, yet all voters must receive the same message In this game, candidates commit to efficient platforms as long as some voters are informed. Promising a public good and targeting messages in this way increases the candidate’s vote share among uninformed voters compared to choosing the platform that does not promise any public good. The key restriction on message complexity is that candidates cannot perfectly reveal their entire platform to voters In this sense, our study of communication technologies focuses on segmented media consumption rather than increasingly complex campaigning. The Appendix contains the proofs of the results that are not proved in the text
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