Sequential Elections with Limited Information

Abstract

We develop an incomplete information model of a sequence of elections in a one-dimensional policy space, where voters have no contemporaneous information about candidate positions, and candidates have no information about voter preferences. The only source of information is contemporaneous endorsement data and historical data on the policy positions of previous winning candidates. We define a notion of “stationary rational expectations equilibrium”, and show that such an equilibrium results in outcomes which are equivalent to those that would occur under full information.