American Economic Review
ISSN 0002-8282 (Print) | ISSN 1944-7981 (Online)
Keep Your Enemies Closer: Strategic Platform Adjustments during US and French Elections
American Economic Review
(pp. 2488–2528)
Abstract
We study changes in political discourse during campaigns, using a novel dataset of candidate websites for US House elections, 2002–2016, and manifestos for French parliamentary and local elections, 1958–2022. We find that candidates move to the center in ideology and rhetorical complexity between the first round (or primary) and the second round (or general election). This convergence reflects candidates' strategic adjustment to their opponents, as predicted by Downsian competition: Using an RDD we show that candidates converge to the platform of opponents who narrowly qualified for the last round as opposed to those who narrowly failed to qualify.Citation
Di Tella, Rafael, Randy Kotti, Caroline Le Pennec, and Vincent Pons. 2025. "Keep Your Enemies Closer: Strategic Platform Adjustments during US and French Elections." American Economic Review 115 (8): 2488–2528. DOI: 10.1257/aer.20231045Additional Materials
JEL Classification
- D72 Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
- D83 Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness
- D91 Micro-Based Behavioral Economics: Role and Effects of Psychological, Emotional, Social, and Cognitive Factors on Decision Making