Targeted political advertising and strategic behavior by uninformed voters

Abstract

We consider the case where political advertising is targeted to a subset of uninformed voters and show how pressure groups, candidates, and uninformed voters interact to achieve an equilibrium outcome. The paper accomplishes the following: (1) It derives the optimal behavior of those uninformed voters who do not received targeted campaign advertising. (2) It suggests that previous results may have exaggerated the power of pressure groups and political advertising—even when there is directed advertising, any negative effect is mitigated by strategic behavior of the uninformed. (3) In the limit, pressure group donations move the outcome toward the median voter, contrary to what much of the literature on pressure groups claims.