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The amount of political information that voters decide to acquire during an electoral campaign depends, among other things, on prior ideological beliefs about parties and/or candidates. Voters that are ex ante indifferent about the candidates attach little value to information because they perceive that voting itself will have little value. Voters that are ex ante very ideological also attach little value to information because they think that the news will hardly change their opinion. Thus, high incentives to be informed can be found at intermediate levels of partisanship. Moreover, the impact of increased political knowledge on turnout is asymmetric: new information increases the probability of voting of indifferent voters but decreases that of very ideological voters. These results are derived within a decision theoretical model of information acquisition and turnout that combines the Riker—Ordeshook (1968) approach to voting behaviour with the Becker (1965) approach to personal production functions. These predictions are then tested on survey data from the 1997 British Election Study (Heath et al., 1999). Our empirical findings are compatible with all the results of the theoretical exercise.

The amount of political information that voters decide to acquire during an electoral campaign depends, among other things, on prior ideological beliefs about parties and/or candidates. Voters that are ex ante indifferent about the candidates attach little value to information because they perceive that voting itself will have little value. Voters that are ex ante very ideological also attach little value to information because they think that the news will hardly change their opinion. Thus, high incentives to be informed can be found at intermediate levels of partisanship. Moreover, the impact of increased political knowledge on turnout is asymmetric: new information increases the probability of voting of indifferent voters but decreases that of very ideological voters. These results are derived within a decision theoretical model of information acquisition and turnout that combines the Riker--Ordeshook (1968) approach to voting behaviour with the Becker (1965) approach to personal production functions. These predictions are then tested on survey data from the 1997 British Election Study (Heath et al., 1999). Our empirical findings are compatible with all the results of the theoretical exercise. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Ltd., copyright.]

This article studies the impact of instrumental voting on information demand and mass media behaviour during electoral campaigns. If voters act instrumentally then information demand should increase with the closeness of an election. If mass media are profit-maximizing firms then information supply should be larger in electoral constituencies where the contest is expected to be closer, delivery costs are lower and customers are on average more profitable for advertisers. The impact of the size of the electorate is theoretically undetermined. These conclusions are derived within a formal model of information demand and supply, and then tested, with good results, on data from the 1997 general election in Britain.

Theories of redistribution inspired by the Downsian model receive little support from empirical investigation. In this article I argue that one of the possible explanations is that the standard Downsian theory, and the empirical specifications derived from it, ignore electoral turnout. Empirical evidence consistently shows that higher-income citizens are more likely to vote; office-seeking candidates should therefore include this probability in their objective function. As a consequence, the pivotal voter is not the median in the income distribution, but is generally richer. Moreover, an increase in income inequality does not unambiguously increase the political demand for redistribution, as most literature takes for granted. Including turnout in the model restores the compatibility of the Downsian theory with current empirical evidence. A regression analysis on panel data for 41 countries in the period 1972–98 confirms the importance of turnout as an explanatory variable for social spending.

This article studies the impact of instrumental voting on information demand and mass media behaviour during electoral campaigns. If voters act instrumentally then information demand should increase with the closeness of an election. If mass media are profit-maximizing firms then information supply should be larger in electoral constituencies where the contest is expected to be closer, delivery costs are lower and customers are on average more profitable for advertisers. The impact of the size of the electorate is theoretically undetermined. These conclusions are derived within a formal model of information demand and supply, and then tested, with good results, on data from the 1997 general election in Britain. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Ltd., copyright 2007.]

This paper studies the impact of instrumental voting on information demand and mass media behaviour during electoral campaigns. If voters act instrumentally then information demand should increase with the closeness of an election. Mass media are modeled as profit-maximizing firms that take into account information demand, the value of customers to advertisers and the marginal cost of customers. Information supply should be larger in electoral constituencies where the contest is expected to be closer, there is a higher population density, and customers are on average more profitable for advertisers. The impact of electorate size is theoretically undetermined. These conclusions are then tested with comfortable results on data from the 1997 general election in Britain. ; I wish to express my gratitude to the European Commission for financial support (Marie Curie Fellowship).

What are the political consequences of the diffusion of broadband internet? We address this question by studying the 2008 US presidential election, the first political campaign where the internet played a key role. Drawing on data from the FEC and the FCC, we provide robust evidence that internet penetration in US counties is associated with an increase in turnout, an increase in campaign contributions to the Democrats and an increase in the share of Democratic vote. We then propose an IV strategy to deal with potential endogeneity concerns: we exploit geographic discontinuities along state borders with different right-of-way laws, which constitute the main determinant of the cost of building new infrastructure. IV estimates confirm a positive impact of broadband diffusion on turnout, while the pro-Democratic Party effect of the internet appears to be less robust.