Partisan voters are optimistic about electoral outcomes: their estimates of the probability of electoral success for their party or candidate are substantially higher than the average among the electorate. This has large potential implications for political bargaining. Optimism about future...

Studies in political science and psychology suggest that voters' perceptions of political positions depend on their personal views of the candidates. A voter who likes/dislikes a candidate will perceive his position as closer to/further from his own than it really is (projection). Clearly these...

The quality of political candidates often depends on the current state of the world, for example because their personal characteristics are more valuable in some situations than in others. We explore the implications of state-dependent candidate quality in a model of electoral competition where...

In this paper we contribute to the study of how democracy works when politicians are better informed than the electorate about conditions relevant for policy choice. We do so by setting up and analyzing a game theoretic model of electoral competition. An important feature of the model is that...