Should Politicians be Informed? Targeted Benefits and Heterogeneous Voters

We compare two scenarios in a model where politicians offer local public goods to heterogeneous voters: one where politicians have access to data on voters and thus can target specific ones, and another where politicians only decide on the level of spending. When the budget is small, or the public good has a high value, access to voter information leads the winner to focus on poorer voters, enhancing voter welfare. With a larger budget or less crucial public goods, politicians target a narrow group of swing voters, which harms the voter welfare.