Limited information and coordinated voting in multi-party elections under plurality rule: The role of campaigns

This essay bridges the logic of electoral coordination with the observation that many voters cannot recognize ex post viable candidates. When strategic voting is limited, behavioral factors of sincere voting play a large part in coordinating uninformed voters and inform the expectations of potentially strategic voters about the patterns of voting. Using the 2011 Canadian Election Survey, I found strong effects of the density of campaign contacts and the asymmetries in the campaigns spending and party identification on the predictability of the patterns of intra-district competition. A comparison of the effects of behavioral factors on the uninformed and informed voters confirms that the effect of centrifugal spending and party identification is conditional on the ability of voters to recognize the leaders of district competition.