Gaëtan Fournier

Internal seminars
Eco-lunch

Gaëtan Fournier

AMSE
Allocating Communication Time in Electoral Competition
Joint with
Alexandre Arnout
Venue

MEGA Salle Carine Nourry

MEGA - Salle Carine Nourry

Maison de l'économie et de la gestion d'Aix
424 chemin du viaduc
13080 Aix-en-Provence

Date(s)
Thursday, December 11 2025| 12:00pm to 1:00pm
Contact(s)

Houda Hafidi: houda.hafidi[at]sciencespo-aix.fr
Federico Trionfetti: federico.trionfetti[at]univ-amu.fr

Abstract

Political campaigns influence how voters prioritize issues, which in turn impacts electoral outcomes. In this paper, we study how candidates’ communication shapes which issues prevail during the campaign, through which mechanisms, and to what extent. We develop an electoral competition model with two candidates, each endowed with exogenous platforms and characteristics. Candidates allocate strategically their communication time across two issues to maximize their expected vote shares. We find that when one candidate holds similar comparative advantages on both issues, the disadvantaged candidate communicate on a single issue to saturate the campaign with one topic and then increases the randomness of the election. The advantaged candidate has the opposite incentive and communicate on both issues, creating an asymmetry in the campaign. We show that in some cases, the campaign can become entirely centered on a single issue.