Electoral Endorsements and Campaign Contributions

Abstract

This paper models information transmission in an electoral campaign. The voters have conflicting policy interests, but they are congruent in their desire to elect a competent politician. They hold private information about the candidates for office, and they use endorsements and campaign contributions to signal their information, so as to advertise their most preferred candidates. Endorsements are cheap talk, but campaign contributions are costly, hence, contributions are stronger signals than endorsements. Therefore, contributions help to transmit information when voter interests are relatively divergent (however, not so much that campaigning is useless).

Keywords: campaign contributions, cheap talk, burned money, incumbency advantage

JEL Classification: D72, D82