Campaign Promises as an Imperfect Signal: The Electoral Advantages of being an Extreme Candidate

This paper develops a political competition model in which campaign platforms are partially binding. A candidate who implements a policy that di¤ers from his/her platform must pay a cost of betrayal that increases with the size of the discrepancy. I also assume that voters are uncertain about candidate preferences for policies. If voters believe that a candidate is likely to be extreme, there exists a semiseparating equilibrium: an extreme candidate imitates a moderate candidate with some probabil-ity, and with the remaining probability, he approaches the median policy. Although an extreme candidate will implement a more extreme policy than a moderate candi-date regardless of imitation or approach, partial pooling ensures that voters prefer an extreme candidate who does not pretend to be moderate over an uncertain candidate who announces a moderate platform. As a result, a moderate candidate never has a higher probability of winning than an extreme one