Targeted Advertising in Elections

How does targeted advertising influence electoral outcomes? This paper presents a one-dimensional spatial model of voting in which a privately informed challenger persuades voters to support him over the status quo. I show that targeted advertising enables the challenger to persuade voters with opposing preferences and swing elections decided by such voters. Ex ante commitment power is unnecessary—the challenger succeeds by strategically revealing different pieces of verifiable information to different voters. Publicizing all political ads would mitigate the negative effects of targeted advertising and help voters collectively make the right choice. (JEL D72, D82, D83, M37)