Working Paper No. 08-11

'Wave riding' or 'Owning the issue': How do candidates determine campaign agendas?

Mariya Burdina

October 2008, Updated November 2009

ABSTRACT

In this paper I adress the question of how the agendas for political cam- paigns are being determined, which issues candidates discuss and whether or not candidates discuss similar issues. Two candidates compete for the votes of four groups of voters by choosing how to allocate their time across two dierent issues. Candidates' positions are xed, and their most pre- ferred policies will be implemented after the candidate is elected. Each candidate has a unit of time to clarify his position on both issues. The time spent by candidate discussing an issue will aect the level of uncer- tanty regarding candidate's policy on that issue among the voters. Both voter distribution and issue importance aect the outcome of the election. Voter distribution determines which candidate will have an advantage in the election and issue importance determines the minimum amount of time that a candidate with advantage has to devote to the most important issue in order to win the election. I nd that in most cases, candidates are willing to discuss both issues to a certain degree, and dialogue between candidates is possible. Only when candidates disagree on both issues, which are equally important to the voters, each candidate will discuss the issue upon which he agrees with the decisive group of voters.

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