Signaling Character in Electoral Competition

Abstract

We study a one dimensional Hotelling-Downs model of electoral competition with the following innovation: a fraction of candidates have character and are exogenously committed to a campaign platform; this is unobservable to voters. However, character is desirable, and a voter's utility is a convex combination of standard policy preferences and her assessment of a candidate's character. This structure generates a signaling game between strategic candidates and voters, since a policy platform not only affects voters' utilities directly, but also indirectly through inferences about a candidate's character. The model generates a number of predictions, starting with a failure of the median voter theorem. We argue that the results help explain why candidates sometimes choose non-median platforms, and moreover, why a majority of voters can rationally vote for a non-centrist candidate.