Political competition when media create candidates’ charisma

This paper studies the location decisions of political parties. We propose a game where agents vote according to ideology and valence, and media create candidates’ charisma. The results we obtain show that candidates realize the power of media and therefore, locate themselves at some point between the position of the median voter and that of the media. We further obtain that depending on the media outlets the voters choose to see, the equilibrium location of candidates may differ. Thus, when voters choose among the outlets, candidates may differentiate their platforms. Differently, when voters are exposed to all the outlets, candidates tend more to moderate their ideology, in an attempt to get the favor of all the media. Copyright Springer Science + Business Media, Inc. 2006