Data and Code for: Keep your Enemies Closer: Strategic Platform Adjustments during U.S. and French Elections

Principal Investigator(s):  View help for Principal Investigator(s) Rafael Di Tella, Harvard Business School and NBER; Randy Kotti, CREST - Ecole polytechnique; Caroline Le Pennec, HEC Montréal; Vincent Pons, Harvard Business School, NBER, and CEPR

Version:  View help for Version V1

Name File Type Size Last Modified
  .Rproj.user 06/04/2025 07:09:PM
  Analysis 04/09/2025 04:35:AM
  France 04/09/2025 04:35:AM
  US 04/09/2025 04:34:AM
  renv 04/09/2025 05:02:AM
.RData application/x-rlang-transport 49 bytes 06/04/2025 03:09:PM
.Rhistory text/plain 20.5 KB 06/04/2025 03:09:PM
.Rprofile text/plain 42 bytes 06/04/2025 03:09:PM
README.pdf application/pdf 265.1 KB 07/04/2025 02:22:AM
Replication.Rproj text/plain 205 bytes 04/09/2025 12:34:AM

Project Citation: 

Di Tella, Rafael, Kotti, Randy, Le Pennec, Caroline, and Pons, Vincent. Data and Code for: Keep your Enemies Closer: Strategic Platform Adjustments during U.S. and French Elections. Nashville, TN: American Economic Association [publisher], 2025. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2025-07-14. https://doi.org/10.3886/E226001V1

Project Description

Summary:  View help for Summary We study changes in political discourse during campaigns, using a novel dataset of candidate websites for U.S. 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.

Scope of Project

Subject Terms:  View help for Subject Terms spatial voting models; median voter theorem; downsian model; platform convergence; polarization; complexity; ideological shifts
JEL Classification:  View help for JEL Classification
      P00 Economic Systems: General
Geographic Coverage:  View help for Geographic Coverage United States, France
Time Period(s):  View help for Time Period(s) 1958 – 2022


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V1 [2025-07-14]

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