IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ecj/econjl/v119y2009i540p1324-1343.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

How Pressure Groups Activate Voters and Move Candidates Closer to the Median

Author

Listed:
  • Donald Wittman

Abstract

This article shows how uninformed but rational voters can respond intelligently to political advertising. The article models a situation where a candidate must rely on a pressure group for financing political advertising and making endorsements. The pressure group uses its power over the purse to influence the position chosen by the candidate. Nevertheless, when uninformed voters use a strategic rule of thumb, pressure-group contributions always move the outcome of the election closer to the median voter. By using such a rule of thumb, when there is advertising, uninformed voters can have the same influence on the election as informed voters. Copyright © The Author(s). Journal compilation © Royal Economic Society 2009.

Suggested Citation

  • Donald Wittman, 2009. "How Pressure Groups Activate Voters and Move Candidates Closer to the Median," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 119(540), pages 1324-1343, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:ecj:econjl:v:119:y:2009:i:540:p:1324-1343
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Arye L. Hillman & Heinrich W. Ursprung, 2016. "Where are the rent seekers?," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 27(2), pages 124-141, June.
    2. Lourdes Rojas Rubio, 2022. "Leader influence on Politics," THEMA Working Papers 2022-16, THEMA (THéorie Economique, Modélisation et Applications), Université de Cergy-Pontoise.
    3. Gil Epstein & Yosef Mealem & Shmuel Nitzan, 2013. "The efficacy and efforts of interest groups in post elections policy formation," Economics of Governance, Springer, vol. 14(1), pages 77-105, February.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ecj:econjl:v:119:y:2009:i:540:p:1324-1343. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley-Blackwell Digital Licensing or Christopher F. Baum (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/resssea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.