Strategic Campaign Communication: Evidence from 30,000 Candidate Manifestos
通过分析法国两轮选举中三万份候选人宣言，发现政治家会策略性地调整竞选沟通，在坚持党派立场的同时，通过宣传中性非政策议题来吸引更广泛选民，且这种温和化策略与执政表现正相关。
Abstract Politicians seeking to persuade voters may not always be able to say what they would like to say. Adopting policy positions opposite to that of their party or contradicting their previous policy announcements may be costly. I use computational text analysis on 30,000 candidate manifestos from two-round French elections to show that politicians take these costs into account, by toeing the party line and sticking to their platform, while also strategically adjusting their campaign communication and advertising neutral non-policy issues when they need to reach a broader electorate. I provide suggestive evidence that this moderation of electoral discourse predicts better performance in office and may therefore provide valuable information to voters.