Personal Influence: Social Context and Political Competition

We study a model of electoral competition where voters obtain information on candidates’ platforms through campaign advertising, and word-of-mouth communication.

We show that when the costs of campaign advertising are low, an increase in word-of-mouth communication among voters causes polarization. In particular, the more voters can exchange political information between each other, the more often extremist candidates run in the election and win against moderate candidates.

For more information, contact Antonio Merlo.