Does deceptive advertising reduce turnout? Theory and laboratory evidence

We consider two-candidate elections in which voters are uncertain about candidates ’ qualities and candidates can inform voters of their quality by sending advertisements. We compare campaigns where ad-vertising must be true to campaigns with deceptive advertisements in which the low quality candidate falsely claims to be high quality. Voting is voluntary and voters have no cost of voting. In our envi-ronment we demonstrate Bayesian Nash equilibria which imply that voter turnout is lower in campaigns where deceptive advertising is pos-sible. We proceed to conduct laboratory elections, and observe that participation among voters who receive an advertisement is high, but lower in treatments where deceptive advertising is possible. Moreover, efficiency of the electoral outcome is much lower in treatments with deception. Implications of our results for voter participation in natu-rally occurring democratic elections are discussed