Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Marin Students To Conduct Exit Polling During November Election [Interview], Alison Howard

Alison Dana Howard

How The Twenty-Six Superfounders Fared At The Ballot Box, Peter J. Aschenbrenner

Peter J. Aschenbrenner

Twenty-six delegates who attended the federal convention at Philadelphia and who signed the constitution also attended their state ratifying conventions. Many of these SuperFounders ran for federal elective office in the first federal elections.

Information And Extremism In Elections, Raphael Boleslavsky, Christopher Cotton

Raphael Boleslavsky

We show that informative political campaigns can increase political extremism and decrease voter welfare. We present a model of elections in which candidate ideology is strategically selected prior to a campaign which reveals information about candidate quality. Documented means by which campaigns can harm voters are not present in our model; special interest groups, fundraising, and biased or private information are not part of the analysis. Even under these optimistic assumptions, we establish that informative campaigns have negative consequences. We discuss implications regarding media coverage, the number of debates, and campaign finance reform.