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Persuading voters

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  • Alonso, Ricardo
  • Câmara, Odilon

Abstract

In a symmetric information voting model, an individual (politician) can influence voters' choices by strategically designing a policy experiment (public signal). We characterize the politician's optimal experiment. With a non-unanimous voting rule, she exploits voters' heterogeneity by designing an experiment with realizations targeting different winning coalitions. Consequently, under a simple-majority rule, a majority of voters might be strictly worse off due to the politician's influence. We characterize voters' preferences over electoral rules and provide conditions for a majority of voters to prefer a supermajority (or unanimity) voting rule, in order to induce the politician to supply a more informative experiment.

Suggested Citation

  • Alonso, Ricardo & Câmara, Odilon, 2016. "Persuading voters," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 67953, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    • Handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:67953
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    strategic experimentation; persuasion; voting;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J1 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics

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