The Revelation of Information Through the Electoral Process: An Exploratory Analysis*

This paper investigates the incentives for candidates to make informative campaign speeches concerning their policy intentions. Electoral competition is modeled as a game of communication in which candidates’policy preferences are private information and they compete by making pre‐electoral policy announcements. An equilibrium is shown to exist in which candidates reveal their true policy intentions. We find that campaign messages are more likely to be informative, the less powerful is the elected office, the more attractive are candidates’opportunities outside of office, and the more uniform are candidates’prior beliefs as to the median voter's preferred policy.