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on Collective Decision-Making |
| By: | Georgy Egorov; Sergei Guriev; Maxim Mironov; Ekaterina Zhuravskaya |
| Abstract: | Why do political campaigns so often yield unexpected results? We address this question by separately estimating the direct effect of a campaign on targeted voters and the indirect effect on others in the same social environment. Partnering with a local NGO during Argentina’s 2023 presidential election, we randomized the distribution of leaflets providing an expert assessment of the likely consequences of certain proposals by the outsider candidate Javier Milei. Exploiting Argentina’s unique sub-precinct election reporting system, we show that the campaign reduced Milei’s support among directly treated voters, as expected, but increased his support among untreated voters in treated precincts, producing a backfiring, net-positive effect for Milei. A pre-registered replication confirmed these opposite-signed effects. Using theory and a survey experiment, we show that the minority of voters who disbelieved the campaign were more motivated to discuss it with peers, convincing them to support Milei. This mobilization effect appears especially likely when campaigns criticize outsider candidates. Our results highlight how campaigns aimed at anti-elite candidates can unintentionally mobilize support for them. |
| JEL: | C93 D72 P00 |
| Date: | 2025–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:34430 |
| By: | Pavlina R. Tcherneva |
| Abstract: | On November 5, 2024, American voters sent Donald Trump back to the White House. In 2020, he lost his bid for reelection to Joe Biden, after winning in 2016 against Hillary Clinton (but only thanks to the electoral college). This time, however, Trump won the popular vote. All the new energy that surrounded the Harris-Walz campaign was outmatched by the turnout from Trump supporters. All polls—whatever one’s feelings about their reliability--kept pointing to the same defining issue in this (as in every other) election: the economy. Critical issues of democracy, abortion, and immigration filled the airwaves and political speeches, but the economy remained once again more powerful than any one of them. |
| Date: | 2024–11 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:lev:levypn:24-3 |
| By: | Mostafa Raeisi Sarkandiz |
| Abstract: | This article investigates the fundamental factors influencing the rate and manner of Electoral participation with an economic model-based approach. In this study, the structural parameters affecting people's decision making are divided into two categories. The first category includes general topics such as economic and livelihood status, cultural factors and, also, psychological variables. In this section, given that voters are analyzed within the context of consumer behavior theory, inflation and unemployment are considered as the most important economic factors. The second group of factors focuses more on the type of voting, with emphasis on government performance. Since the incumbent government and its supportive voters are in a game with two Nash equilibrium, and also because the voters in most cases are retrospect, the government seeks to keep its position by a deliberate change in economic factors, especially inflation and unemployment rates. Finally, to better understand the issue, a hypothetical example is presented and analyzed in a developing country in the form of a state-owned populist employment plan. |
| Date: | 2025–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2510.24344 |
| By: | Olivera, Javier; Breunig, Christian; Broderstad, Troy; Dumont, PatricK; Sterba, Maj-Britt |
| Abstract: | This paper compares the “mental maps” of redistribution among politicians and citizens across seven parliaments, using original in-person surveys of sitting MPs and nationally representative citizen samples. Fairness beliefs and ideology are the strongest correlates of support for redistribution in both groups, while misperceptions of wealth concentration matter for citizens but much less for politicians. A central finding is that politicians hold markedly more polarized views on redistribution than citizens, including within the same party families. We also find systematic elite–voter gaps: left MPs are more supportive than their voters (notably on inheritance taxation), whereas right/liberal MPs are less supportive than theirs. These patterns point to a representation concern and a bargaining space among elites that is narrower than in the electorate. |
| Keywords: | preferences for redistribution; polarization; politicians; fairness beliefs; inequality perceptions; wealth taxes |
| JEL: | H24 D31 D63 |
| Date: | 2025–11 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:130033 |