Elections, Information, and State-Dependent Candidate Quality

We study a model of electoral competition where politicians are better informed than the electorate about conditions relevant for policy choice. There are two states of the world. The distribution of voters'preferred poli- cies shifts with the state. The two candidates are both completely o¢ ce- motivated but dier in state-dependent quality. They observe the true state before simultaneously announcing credible positions. Voters do not observe the state but receive a noisy signal before casting their votes. If the signal is su¢ ciently informative and unknown to the candidates when they take positions then candidates will, in re…ned equilibrium, reveal the true state by converging on the median position of this state. Otherwise candidates will not reveal their information and voters will rely solely on their signal when casting their votes. We also show that when the signal of the voters is su¢ ciently informative then they are all better oif candidates do not observe their signal before taking positions. If the signal is not su¢ ciently informative then all voters prefer that candidates observe their signal before taking positions. Finally we show that it is possible for all voters to become worse owhen the quality of both candidates is increased.