Keep Your Enemies Closer: Strategic Platform Adjustments during US and French Elections
利用美国众议院选举（2002-2016）和法国选举（1958-2022）的候选人网站与宣言数据，发现候选人在两轮投票间向中间靠拢，且策略性地调整平台以应对对手。
We study changes in political discourse during campaigns, using a novel dataset of candidate websites for US House elections, 2002–2016, and manifestos for French parliamentary and local elections, 1958–2022. We find that candidates move to the center in ideology and rhetorical complexity between the first round (or primary) and the second round (or general election). This convergence reflects candidates’ strategic adjustment to their opponents, as predicted by Downsian competition: Using an RDD we show that candidates converge to the platform of opponents who narrowly qualified for the last round as opposed to those who narrowly failed to qualify.