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  5. Keep your Enemies Closer: Strategic Platform Adjustments during U.S. and French Elections

蝌蚪网 Review

ISSN 0002-8282 (Print) | ISSN 1944-7981 (Online)

Keep your Enemies Closer: Strategic Platform Adjustments during U.S. and French Elections

  • Rafael Di Tella
  • Randy Kotti
  • Caroline Le Pennec
  • Vincent Pons
蝌蚪网 Review (Forthcoming)

Abstract

We study changes in political discourse during campaigns, using a novel dataset of candidate websites for U.S. House elections, 2002-2016, and manifestos for French parliamentary and local elections, 1958-2022. We find that candidates move to the center in ideology and rhetorical complexity between the first round (or primary) and the second round (or general election). This convergence reflects candidates鈥� strategic adjustment to their opponents, as predicted by Downsian competition: Using an RDD, we show that candidates converge to the platform of opponents who narrowly qualified for the last round, as opposed to those who narrowly failed to qualify.

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