Informative campaigning in multidimensional politics: The role of naïve voters
| Published date | 01 January 2022 |
| Date | 01 January 2022 |
| DOI | 10.1177/09516298211061153 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Informative campaigning in
multidimensional politics: The
role of naïve voters
Satoshi Kasamatsu
Faculty of Economics, Musashi University, Tokyo, Japan.
Daiki Kishishita
School of Management, Tokyo University of Science, Tokyo, Japan.
Abstract
This paper aimsto investigate the possibility that electoralcampaigning transmitstruthful information
in a situation where campaigning has a direct persuasive effect on a subset of the electorate called
“naïve voters.”To this end, we constructa multi-sender signaling game in which an incumbentand a
challenger decide whether to focus on policy or ability in electoral campaigning, and a media outlet
then decides whether to gather news. Voters are divided into sophisticated and naïve voters. We
demonstratethat a candidate’s strategy regardingtheir issues of focus (campaignmessages) can signal
his or her private information. Specifically, negative campaigningagainst the incumbent’s abilitysignals
the incumbent’s low ability in all separating equilibria. Itis also noteworthy that separating equilibria
exist only when sophisticated and naïvevoters coexist. This implies thata fraction of naïve voters has
a non-monotonic effect on the possibility of transmitting truthful information.
Keywords
Political campaigning, negative campaigning, issue selection, Bayesian irrationality, mass media
1. Introduction
Voters are not necessarily familiar with all relevant policy issues or candidate characteristics.
Thus, the transmission of information to voters from such agents as candidates is highly
Corresponding author:
Daiki Kishishita, School of Management, Tokyo University of Science, 1-11-2, Fujimi, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo, 102-
0071, Japan.
Email: daiki.kishishita@gmail.com
Article
Journal of Theoretical Politics
2022, Vol. 34(1) 78–106
© The Author(s) 2021
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/ 09516298211061153
journals.sagepub.com/home/jtp
important in maintaining the responsiveness of a representative democracy. Political
campaigning—including advertising, speeches, and debates—is one significant path to
transmitting such information; however, campaigns may not convey truth because this
information is often soft. Our study examines this transmission of soft information
through campaigns.
Specifically, we emphasize two important features of electoral entrepreneurship.
The first feature is the choice of campaign strategies. As campaign resources are
limited, candidates cannot convey his or her opinions on all relevant issues and
must decide what issues to include in political campaigning. This is the key element
of campaign strategies, and candidates rely on different strategies depending on
their circumstances.
The second feature is that campaigning has a direct persuasive effect on a subset of the
electorate. Literature on rational choices often assumes that voters are rational, in that
they believe campaigns only when the campaign conveys truthful information.
However, in reality, campaigns can directly persuade naïve voters; hence, when deter-
mining campaign strategies, candidates must consider the effects on both naïve and
rational voters.
This study aims to investigate the possibility of truthful information transmission in a
model incorporating these two features of real electoral campaigns. Specifically, we
analyze whether candidates’decisions in selecting issues convey truthful information
by focusing on the role of naïve voters.
To this end, we construct a model consisting of voters, an incumbent, a challenger, and
a media outlet. There are two issues in the election: policy and ability. As a candidate’s
ability is realized only after he or she has a government seat, the challenger’s ability is
unobservable to all players, while both candidates are aware of the incumbent’s
ability. However, voters are not aware of the incumbent’s ability. Each candidate must
decide whether to focus on a campaign on policy or the incumbent’s ability. The
media outlet then decides whether to gather news on the incumbent’s ability. Finally,
voters vote for one of the two candidates. These voters are divided into sophisticated
and naïve voters. A sophisticated voter knows which candidate’s policy will provide
the most benefit, and he or she is sophisticated, in that their beliefs are updated in a
Bayesian manner. In contrast, naïve voters do not know which policy is the best for
them and are simply persuaded by campaigns.
We first demonstrate that candidates’focus on policy or ability can signal the incum-
bent’s ability. Additionally, at every such equilibrium, the challenger focuses on the
incumbent’s ability if and only if the incumbent’s ability is low. As campaigns
focused on the incumbent’s ability can be regarded as negative campaigns, this result
implies that the challenger’s negative campaigns occur to signal the incumbent’s low
ability.
The messages in this model are costless, and thus, the game is a “cheap-talk”game.
However, the type of campaign can differently influence the mobilization of naïve
voters,
1
which can transform the game into a signaling game. In detail, consider cam-
paigns’direct persuasion effect on naïve voters. Logically, if the challenger’s policy is
desirable, the incumbent’s policy must be undesirable. Hence, when the challenger per-
suades a naïve voter that his or her policy is beneficial, the voter is simultaneously
Kasamatsu and Kishishita 79
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