STRATEGIC POLITICAL CAMPAIGNS: RESPONSIVE, SWING VOTERS WHO TURN OUT WILL BE OFFERED BETTER POLICIES

Political campaigns aimed at giving the electorate information about what parties would do if they won the election have profound implications for their actual policies. That is the conclusion of research by Professor Christian Schultz of the University of Copenhagen, published in the July 2007 issue of the Economic Journal.

Such campaigns would at first sight seem beneficial from a social perspective as they allow voters to make more informed choices. But this study shows that campaigns affect policies in systematic ways, which are not necessarily related to the general wellbeing of the electorate or fairness. Who gains and who loses is determined by the parties’ strategic considerations.

Parties will target campaigns at those groups of voters for whom campaigns are most effective in procuring votes. These are groups with many swing voters, with a high turnout (and a high increase in turnout in response to campaigning) and groups where the initial level of information is low. The campaigns will increase the level of information in these groups and this in turn makes the parties offer these groups better policies. In the end, these groups will benefit from the strategic campaigning.

Political campaigns are an important part of electoral democracies. Candidates spend endless days on the campaign trail and parties spend huge amounts of campaign money. According to the Federal Election Commission, the parties and candidates are estimated to have spent roughly three billion dollars in the 2000 US electoral cycle.

Although the United States is probably the country where campaign money is most important, campaign expenditures are increasing in most developed democracies, and it is important to understand their impact on elections and policies. Clearly, the campaigns have a purpose – to influence voters so that they are induced to vote for the campaigning party – and it is well documented that they actually work.

Some campaigns work like nice advertisements, with no particular information content. But parties also spend considerable resources on informative campaigns, informing the electorate about their policies or perhaps about other parties' policies.

Informative campaigning creates a particular distribution of information in the electorate, which in turn affects real policies. A voter group's information level is determined by the parties' strategic incentives to gain most votes from the limited campaign money rather than considerations of fairness.

This favours groups that already gain from the strategic struggle among the parties, the mobile groups and the groups with high turnout. In this respect, informative campaigning makes the distribution of policies across groups more unequal than if all groups had the same level of information. And a limit on campaign spending (or finances) would make for a more equal distribution in society.

But there is a countervailing effect: campaigns are also targeted at groups where the level of information initially is low. These groups are initially disadvantaged, and therefore equality may be enhanced by campaigning. One would often think of such groups being less educated, low-income groups and campaigns may therefore benefit such weak groups.

More receptive groups also gain. Whether these are less educated or more educated groups is not obvious. Presumably, well-educated people are better at receiving information, but if the information level of well-educated people is very high from news coverage, then there is not much to learn. Empirical research suggests that the latter effect is the most important.

ENDS

Notes for editors: ‘Strategic Campaigns and Redistributive Politics’ by Christian Schultz is published in the July 2007 issue of the Economic Journal.

Christian Schultz is professor of economics at the University of Copenhagen.

For further information: contact Romesh Vaitilingam on 07768-661095 (email: romesh@compuserve.com); or Christian Schultz via email: Christian.Schultz@econ.ku.dk