A Model of Focusing in Political Choice

This article develops a model of voters’ and politicians’ behavior based on the notion that voters focus disproportionately on and, hence, overweigh the policies in which politicians’ platforms differ more. We introduce focusing in a model of electoral competition between differentiated candidates who invest resources to improve the quality of their policies in multiple common-value issues. We show that voters’ attention distortion leads to greater investment in policy development, greater platform differentiation (with politicians standing out in the policies they are more competent in), and greater investment in divisive policies. Finally, we show that focusing can contribute to explanations of puzzling, stylized facts such as the entry of single-issue parties with no electoral chances or the inverse correlation between income inequality and redistribution.