The BBC’s Nick Robinson described the outcome of the British elections by saying Conservative leader David Cameron  “defied all those — including at times himself — who doubted that he could ever increase his party’s support.” This is in part journalistic hyperbole. The extraordinary boost in popular mandate has been just 1.5 percent of the popular vote. A gain of this size, achieved largely by eviscerating the support of your coalition government partners, reflects political skill, and is unexpected given the previous run of polls, but it is not in any way historic. The Conservatives averaged 44 percent of the vote in all British elections in the 20th century, and under Cameron they are nowhere near that still.

Cameron will return to the prime minister’s residence for a maximum stay of three years. If he sticks to his promise not to contest the 2020 election as Tory leader, he must step down by mid 2018 at the latest to allow his successor the opportunity to establish himself before the next election. In the interim, the government will have to face some tough challenges with a newly fragile majority. The constitutional turbulence that perhaps induced 2 percent of English voters to switch, at the last minute, to a ‘safety first’ vote for Cameron, shows no signs of going away.

The so-called Brexit (or ‘British exit’) referendum on whether Britain should stay in the European Union or leave now looms for summer 2016. The previous idea — to delay the referendum until 2017, to give Cameron time to get some concessions from other E.U. countries that would help get a yes vote — threatened to create uncertainty that would damage the British economy and inward investment for too long a period to be practical. So it will happen in 2016, even though in May that year there will also be a potentially epoch-making Scottish Parliament election.

The real history-makers of the 2015 general election are the SNP (Scottish National Party) leadership of Alex Salmond (until last year) and Nicola Sturgeon, since. They have made an astonishing achievement in jumping to over half of all Scottish votes, and from 6 Westminster MPs to 56. We can expect that in May 2016 there is a very fair chance indeed that a majority of voters for the Scottish Parliament will still back the SNP, so that even under Scotland’s proportional representation elections, the SNP will govern Scotland until 2020 with a large majority. In this context, any vote for a British exit from the E.U. is likely to trigger another secession referendum in Scotland as early as 2017.

Perhaps Cameron will manage these huge threats by successfully persuading English voters once again to take the “safety first” option of staying in the E.U. He would then have set himself up to retire as savior of Britain’s link to Europe, and perhaps even of the United Kingdom’s union, too. Even previously skeptical Tories can be heard muttering that a proper constitutional settlement that would bring Britain closer to a federal system could be achieved. Such a settlement would incorporate an EVEL (English votes for English laws) solution that would devolve some powers to England, alongside some hardwired protections for Scotland. But given the Conservative’s historic resistance to constitutional change the odds instead favor them trying to muddle through.

Turning to the other English parties, the Liberal Democrat’s thin, sketchy and whiney manifesto — full of complaints that the big boys ruined their plans for constitutional reform — might well qualify as the shortest suicide note in history. Liberal leader Nick Clegg kept promising in the closing days of the campaign that the Liberal Democrats’ performance would be “the real surprise” of the campaign — and so indeed it it turned out to be. The party’s support slumped from nearly 1 voter in 4 in 2010 to just 1 in 12, and in more than 60 English seats the Greens beat them into fourth place. Clegg kept his seat, but has been forced to resign as party leader.

As the 2011 referendum campaign on voting reform showed, and the history of the Liberal party proved in the 1918-39 period, you can only go into coalitions with the Conservatives at the risk of losing your soul. Clegg’s amazing decision to extend the Fixed Term for Parliament to 5 years was the only enduring achievement of his period as Deputy Premier, and a very nice parting gift it is for Cameron and his successor. Clegg has resigned, but the Liberal Democrats now face an existential crisis, from which it is hard to see them recovering any time soon, especially as Green voting begins (slowly) to solidify at local level.

It was said of the late Bourbon dynasty monarchs in France that despite living through the French revolutionary and Bonapartist periods, they had “learnt nothing and forgotten nothing.” This seems an apt characterization for a Labor party leadership that has had more than two decades to face up to the inevitability of constitutional change in Britain, and repeatedly refused to do so (apart from a brief period from 1997 to 1999). Ed Miliband has resigned as leader, but it is not clear that his successor will do any better.

A whole generation now of political analysts and reformers have pointed out to Labor that the Britain’s current voting system of “first past the post” becomes incredibly unstable when you have multiple parties, and that Labor’s best bet is to change to proportional representation before it gets overtaken. The wipeout of Labor’s Scottish MPs dramatically highlights this point,and it will now be very hard for the party to undo. Scotland was long a ‘dominant party system,’ where Labor reaped outsized rewards, but now looks like it has become one for the SNP.

Similarly I have lost count of the times that Labor leaders have nodded skeptically through the arguments that devolution for Scotland and Wales alone was unstable; that a written constitution is needed to restabilize the UK; that House of Lords reform was a century overdue; that the only way for Labor to win was to have genuinely popular leaders and reasonably distinctive policies; and that the party needed a far healthier relationship with its supporters.

The Labor elites have nodded their heads politely, but gone on to argue that voters care little for such things — it’s the ‘bread and butter’ issues of the economy and the NHS that matter, not political and constitutional reform. Ed Miliband’s whole leadership style was premised on the tactical exploitation of this and that narrow issue, on scraping back to power in a multi-party world without ever trying to resolve the larger issues or achieve genuinely popular policies that might compromise a future Labor government’s grip on the levers of power. Even in the post-referendum dealings with Scotland, Labor’s proposals for devolution of power were always as few and as mean as possible.

And yet what in the end kept Labor’s growth in 2015 votes so dismal, despite Cameron’s economic policies and the erosion of the NHS? Overwhelmingly it was the collapse of the Liberal Democrats to the Tories and to UKIP (foreseeable under the current system of ‘first past the post’ voting), and a late ‘safety first’ reaction against the potential ungovernability that Labor’s cumulative constitutional inaction has now induced. The set of issues that seemed so ‘unimportant on the doorstep’ apparently proved very important indeed for voters in the polling booths. Even though Miliband is gone, it is not yet clear that any potential successor has really escaped the mindset of Labor’s last fifteen years.

Across Europe almost all countries have five or six main parties, and Britain now is no exception. UKIP’s failure to break through in Westminster, and the departure of Nigel Farage as leader, will set the party back a bit, just as some other populists in Europe have also faltered. Nonetheless, the UKIP has made history by boosting their support from 3 to 12 percent nationally. An early Brexit referendum will give them an immediate focus to bounce back — and one that could well boost their party’s organizational potential, as the Scottish referendum campaign so clearly did for the SNP. But now that Farrage has gone, UKIP’s next leadership choice will be crucial.

In the longer term, UKIP’s future partly depends on the choices of other parties. If Cameron buries Brtain’s exit from the E.U. as he hopes to, by allowing a 2016 Brexit vote, the UKIP may not fade away. Its anti-immigration (and anti-foreigner) vein will still work for it, along with a push for social conservatism. Much will also depend on whether the Tories chose Boris Johnson, or Theresa May, or someone else to succeed Cameron by 2018. Only Johnson has any realistic change of winning back the UKIP voters for a once-again hegemonic Conservative party on something like 40 per cent support — a difficult feat indeed after a decade for the Tories in power. Yet Tory members may not want to recognize that and could still misstep, as they have so often since Margaret Thatcher.

Finally, the Greens are still the ‘battlers’ of British politics, with none of the panache yet of some of their European counterparts. However, the party’s roots are growing beneath the topsoil. So if Labor continues to be paralyzed by the political change that has happened, while evading the challenges of properly responding to it, the Greens look certain to grow as a threat on the left. They may also sweep up support from left Liberal Democrats if that party cannot revive.

The combined Conservative plus Labor share of the vote remains stuck at 67 percent, so there is no revival of the two party system in prospect, even in England. Instead an increasingly fragile British state will lumber on with no clear strategy for achieving stabilization, its constitution unwritten, its unity impaired, and its public services in visible decay. Public sector staff now face acutely declining living standards, and the Britain’s tax base is eroding as the two main parties combine to maintain the con that you can have European-standard public services on American-level taxes. Here, too, the 2015 election breaks no trend.

Patrick Dunleavy is a professor of political science and public policy at the London School of Economics

Hillary Rodham Clinton took a stand on immigration policy when she sat down with a group of students in Las Vegas on Tuesday. She aligned herself with President Obama’s controversial executive actions on immigration. She signaled that she would go beyond to “fight for comprehensive immigration reform and a path to citizenship.” She suggested that Republican candidates who are proposing anything short of a “full and equal” path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants are talking about “second-class status.”

Here is how media headlines characterized Clinton’s statements. Vox led with “Hillary just took a stunningly aggressive stance on immigration reform.” The National Journal’s headline stated that “Hillary Clinton Just told immigration Activists What they Want to Hear.” And Politico characterized her speech as a “pivot to the left.”

The reality is much different.  Far from being aggressive, liberal and aligned with immigration activists, Clinton’s views are fairly mainstream. Dramatic shifts in public opinion over the past two decades suggest a real readiness for immigration reform.

Public anxiety over both legal and undocumented immigration has dropped remarkably in recent years according to polling data from The Chicago Council on Global Affairs. While 7 in 10 Americans sensed a “critical threat” by large numbers of immigrants and refugees coming to the United States in 1994, that number had plunged 33 percentage points to a historic low of 39 percent by 2014. Similarly, 7 in 10 Americans in 1994 thought that controlling and reducing immigration was a very important policy goal for the United States, fewer than half — 47 percent — now think this is a very important priority.

The American public also backs Clinton’s call for a pathway to citizenship. A variety of polls have found that majorities of Americans support President Obama’s executive action, favor a way for immigrants to become American citizens, and agree that immigrants strengthen the United States. And 7 in 10 Americans believe that Republicans in Congress should focus on “passing a bill that makes comprehensive reforms to US immigration policy” rather than “focusing on overturning president Obama’s immigration policies.”

Behind the shift in public opinion are economic and demographic realities. Immigration from Mexico is at a net zero. Apprehensions along the Southwest border at their lowest levels since the 1970s, despite last summer’s uptick of child migrants fleeing escalating violence in Central America.

Just as the number of border crossings is slowing, Americans are becoming increasingly aware of the demographic lifeline that immigrants provide to stagnating local economies — particularly in rust belt cities like Chicago, Detroit and Cleveland, where the native-born population is aging out of the workforce — and the urgency of an updated system that allows immigrants to fully contribute to their communities. And economists have taken notice of the projected benefit — a $1.4 billion boost to our gross domestic product over 10 years — of a pathway to citizenship for the undocumented.

Most damning to the notion that Clinton’s stance on immigration has gone far left is the bipartisan backing revealed by the 2014 Chicago Council polling of policy “elites,” which include nearly 700 individuals working in Congress, the executive branch, think tanks and universities, along with journalists, business leaders and internationally focused interest groups and non-governmental organizations.

Among these opinion leaders, very few expressed concern around immigration — regardless of political affiliation. Just 4 percent of Democrats, 16 percent of Republicans and 9 percent of independents view large numbers of immigrants and refugees coming to the United States as a “critical threat.”

Similarly low numbers consider controlling and reducing illegal immigration to be a very important goal: 4 percent of Democrats, 20 percent of Republicans and 9 percent of independents. In fact, among Democratic and independent opinion leaders, controlling and reducing illegal immigration was the lowest priority of the list of 18 issues presented on the survey — and near the lowest for Republicans, just above limiting global warming and strengthening the United Nations.

To be fair, surveys have shown that among average Americans, Republicans are more resistant than Democrats to the idea of immigration reform. But the notion that Hillary’s stance on immigration represents a pivot to the left is hyperbole. Her proposals include many of the same elements found in S.744, the bipartisan reform bill that cleared the Senate in the summer of 2013.

While many believe that Clinton has thrown down the gauntlet for upcoming immigration debates, survey research suggests that her position is simply in line with the preferences of the majority of the American public and influential opinion leaders.

Dina Smeltz (@roguepollster) is a senior fellow on public opinion and foreign policy at The  Chicago Council on Global Affairs , and Sara McElmurry (@s_mcelmurry) is the council’s assistant director for immigration. These views are their own.

The following is a guest post from University of Sussex (Britain) political scientist Dan Hough.

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There is always a unique drama to an election night in Britain, but the events of Thursday, May 7 surprised even the most hardened of British election watchers (see here for a full breakdown of the results). Indeed, if Quentin Tarantino directed results’ nights, then they would probably look like this — ministerial blood everywhere and general carnage as the unexpected just keeps on happening.

The long and short of a dramatic night is that whilst David Cameron will be returning to 10 Downing Street as prime minister, this was an election that fundamentally changed the face of British politics — very possibly permanently. That’s the case for four reasons. First, Britain is now a country with effectively no national political parties. Everyone is now a regionalist in some form. Second, and perhaps most significantly, the success of the Scottish National Party (SNP) has put the very future of Britain on the line. Third, the Liberal Democrats (Lib Dems) have gone from being a party of government to a marginal force with a meagre eight members of Parliament (MPs). That is as close to wipeout as it gets in British politics. Finally, Labour’s performance was deeply underwhelming, and that despite the previous Conservative-led government pushing hard-hitting austerity politics. If Labour is going to win next time round, some serious soul-searching will be required.

2015 British Election results by district, rescaled so each district is same size by Bloomberg Politics. Yellow = SNP, Blue = Conservative, Red = Labour, Orange = Lib Dem)(Source: http://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-uk-election/)

The above figure is a picture (created by Bloomberg Business) of the 650 British constituencies. The map has been skewed so that every one of them is the same size. The story is of three parties with very distinct strongholds. The blue in much of the south and center of England shows how the Conservatives dominate there. The Conservatives have been a predominantly English party since 1997, but now their brand appears to be positively toxic in the vast majority of Scotland and in significant (although not all) parts of Wales. They are in effect an English national party.

Labour (in red), on the other hand, has three strongholds; London, the north of England and much of South Wales. On the face of it, that might not sound too bad, but it is not the stuff of which majorities in Britain are made. This rump of around 230 constituencies leaves Labour a long way from an overall majority, and the next party leader (Ed Miliband, the much derided leader since 2010, has already resigned) has a real challenge to break back into the south of England and Scotland.

The real shock, however, came in Scotland, and this leads to the second main conclusion; Scotland is now ticking very differently to the rest of Britain, and this has clear medium- and long-term implications. The figure above shows the extent of SNP dominance in Scotland. The party won all but three of the 59 Scottish seats. That’s a jump from six seats in 2010 to 56 seats in 2015 on exactly 50 per cent of the vote. Labour, traditionally dominant in Scotland, polled 24.3 percent, whilst the Conservatives managed just 14.9 percent. The swing to the SNP swept more or less all competitors aside, and these included some pretty significant players; the Labour Party’s leader in Scotland, Jim Murphy, lost the seat of East Renfrewshire; the (Liberal Democrat) chief secretary to the treasury, Danny Alexander, lost the wonderfully named Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey seat by a wide margin to the SNP’s Drew Hendry and, most notably, the prospective foreign secretary (Secretary of State) and Labour Party campaign manager Douglas Alexander (no relation to Danny) lost most sensationally to Mhairi Black, a 20-year-old student, in Paisley and Renfrewshire South. The SNP, a party that wants Scotland out of Britain, conquered virtually all.

The loss of the high profile Danny Alexander was a blow to the Lib Dems, but it was by no means the end of the nightmare. Party leader Nick Clegg did hold his seat (Sheffield Hallam), but he quickly resigned as leader. The Lib Dems were effectively decapitated, losing party superstars, such Vince Cable (the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills), Ed Davey (the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change), Charles Kennedy (a former leader) and many of their previous strongholds in the Southwest of Britain. For the Lib Dems, it really could not have been much worse. That has implications not just for them, but for the center of British politics, which has now been hollowed out. Britain, a country that has traditionally prided itself on its pragmatism, seems to have turned its back on its liberal soul.

Finally, what of the future? On the one hand, the Conservatives will be feeling triumphant. They have, against more or less all odds, won an overall majority on little more than 36 percent of the vote. But, it is a very small majority of four (or six if the four Sinn Fein MPs from Northern Ireland who don’t take their seats are discounted), and with the prospect of a referendum on Britain’s E.U. membership now looming large, that could lead to some (very) destabilizing politics. The Conservatives’ experience of small majority government in the 1990s should be a warning to anyone who thinks single party government is going to be straightforward.

Labour, on the other hand, needs to look inward. The party was perceived as too far from the center of British politics with a leader who underwhelmed. The biggest challenge, however, will be to redefine the Britain’s political settlement. The Conservatives might hold power in Westminster, but the SNP’s strength means that a discussion of Britain’s constitutional status is inevitable. Indeed, it may well be that the 2015 election is simply another step on the path to the break-up of the country.

The following is a guest post by Sean R. Roberts and Robert Orttung of George Washington University.

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A “War of Lapels” is raging as many people in the post-Soviet space must make political choices about what to wear on their jackets on May 9 to commemorate the 70^th anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe. How citizens accessorize broadcasts their position on the conflict between Russia and Ukraine.

In many ways, Vladimir Putin has framed Russia’s conflict with Ukraine over the past year around a particular historical narrative of World War II that promotes a mélange of Soviet greatness with Russian nationalism, while branding Ukrainians as fascists. The Kremlin storyline of World War II is in stark contrast to the narrative honored by most living in Ukraine and other parts of Eastern Europe, where remembering the war is not related to present-day political disputes but honors the sacrifices of family members alive at that time.

This transformation of the Soviet narrative of the war into a Russian nationalist one has been particularly apparent in Russian-Ukrainian relations. In response to Ukraine’s rehabilitation of Stepan Bandera, for example, Russia publicly condemned the Ukrainian government and frequently characterized western Ukrainians as fascists on Russian television. In addition, Moscow sought to convince Russian-speaking Ukrainians and the citizens of other post-Soviet states of the dangers of a growing anti-Russian Ukrainian fascism.

In the run-up to the May 9 holiday this year, Moscow is promoting its connections between World War II and the war in eastern Ukraine through an unlikely strategy — by trying to monopolize the lapels of post-Soviet citizens. This situation has its origins in an ingenious, participatory, and continually evolving Russian nationalist propaganda campaign originally created by Putin’s administration in 2005 as part of the 60th anniversary of Victory Day — the wearing of the Ribbon of St. George or the Georgievskaya Lenta . Since 2005, the Georgievskaya Lenta, an orange-and-black-striped ribbon associated with an 18th century czarist Russian military medal, has become an increasingly important part of celebrating the end of World War II in Russia, and it has also been exported by Russia to other post-Soviet states as an overtly Russian symbol of these states’ shared history in the Soviet defeat of Nazi Germany.

[ How the Soviet Union saved the world from Hitler ]

People hold a 278-foot-long St. George’s Ribbon, after climbing up onto Mount Beshtau, near Zheleznovodsk in Stavropol region of Russia, on May 3. (Eduard Korniyenko/Reuters)

While this ribbon has generated controversy in the non-Russian post-Soviet states since its introduction in 2005, over the past two years the ribbon has taken on more overtly Russian nationalist meaning in the context of the Russian-Ukraine war. As a result, the ribbon no longer only represents a remembrance of those from throughout the Soviet Union who gave their lives to defeat Nazi Germany; it also represents a symbol of Russia’s historical and present role in preventing the spread of what it calls fascism, which includes its efforts to undermine Ukraine’s present government. In this sense, the wearing of the Georgievskaya Lenta now also expresses explicit support of Putin’s nationalist agenda in Russia and opposition to Ukraine’s new government and its reform efforts.

As one might expect, it is very unlikely that Ukrainians outside those areas controlled by the Russian-backed rebels will wear the Georgievskaya Lenta this year on May 9. In the context of the war, Ukrainians are becoming only more united in their patriotism and opposition to Russia. Furthermore, the Ukrainian government has decided to adopt a different decoration to celebrate the defeat of Nazism this year — a poppy flower, mimicking that worn throughout the British Commonwealth nations and in the United States.

Screen shot of Ukrainian TV showing the usage of a poppy to commemorate World War II.

This symbolic “war of lapels” has spread throughout the post-Soviet space and threatens to divide the populations of many former Soviet states at a time when they would otherwise be celebrating peace and the sacrifices of their loved ones who had suffered so much during World War II. In Moldova, the Liberal party has taken a strong stance against the Russian World War II narrative, seeking to outlaw the Georgievskaya Lenta as a foreign military symbol. In an attempt to avoid appearing to either support or condemn the Russian narrative, Kyrgyzstan has quietly created their own version of the Russian ribbon by replacing its colors with those of the Kyrgyz flag (red and yellow).

In Kazakhstan, which is one of Russia’s closest allies, but also has a large, often restless ethnic Russian minority and is desperately trying not to take sides in the Russia-Ukraine conflict, the state has also created its own Kazakh ribbon based on its national flag adorned with Soviet medals. So as not to appear to be countering Russia’s distribution of the Georgievskaya Lenta in Kazakhstan, the state has been careful to point out that citizens can wear any lapel decoration they choose. Although this strategy is in line with Kazakhstan’s usual “multi-vector” foreign policy, it is also inviting tension in the country as groups of citizens are beginning to mobilize both for and against the Georgievskaya Lenta .

At a time when many former Soviet citizens wish to honor a generation who gave so much to stop Nazi aggression 70 years ago, this war of symbols is only polluting popular memory and manipulating it to promote current political purposes. Putin’s strategy of using WWII-era victories to support his own aggression in eastern Ukraine will likely backfire over the long run, at least among those former Soviet citizens living outside Russia. In particular, it likely will create new divisions and conflicts within those post-Soviet states seeking to remain neutral in the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

As 2016 presidential hopefuls begin announcing their candidacies, Americans are readying themselves for more than a year and a half of political campaigning.  That’s a long time. Long enough to perhaps cost $5 billion.

However, there are benefits to a long campaign season. As Calvin Coolidge said, “The purpose of a campaign is to send an intelligent and informed voter to the ballot box.” Campaigns may help inform voters and enable them to develop more accurate assessments of the candidates. Long campaigns have the potential to do this even more effectively.

But there is a downside. In a new article (ungated here) Raphael Boleslavsky and I show that informative campaigns can also decrease the incentives for candidates to moderate their views. In other words, more informative campaigns encourage polarization between politicians, which tends to make voters worse off.

In our research, we draw on a game theoretic model.  But the intuition behind and implications of the model are easy to understand.

Imagine that Rick and Hillary are candidates. They are partisans with their own policy views, which are not necessarily aligned with those of the average voter. When announcing their candidacies, Rick and Hillary must each decide whether to run on a platform aligned with their own views, or one more closely aligned with the views of a majority of voters.

The key finding is that which platform they choose may depend on the length of the campaign.

Suppose first that Rick and Hillary live in a world in which there are no debates, media interviews, or public appearances. The candidates announce their policy positions, and then voters cast their ballots.

In this case, voters choose whom to vote for based entirely on how the candidates’ policy positions compare with their own, and any preconceived notions about how likely the candidates are to be competent, trustworthy leaders. In this case, both candidates are likely to choose the more popular policy, recognizing that in order to win election, they must announce a platform that the majority of voters prefer relative to their opponent’s.

This is the median voter theorem at work. The famous theorem says that competition between candidates should lead them to run on platforms aligned with the likely swing voter in the election.

But the median voter theorem does not hold when political campaigns allow voters to form opinions about candidate quality. Suppose now that Rick and Hillary live in a more realistic world in which campaigns last more than a year and a half, and involve numerous debates, interviews and other public appearances.

Over the course of a long campaign, voters will form opinions about how well the candidates think on their feet and react under pressure, how well they deliver a speech, and how well they manage their campaigns. Longer campaigns give voters more opportunity to assess the character, competence, and trustworthiness of the candidates, and form beliefs about which candidate will be most effective in office.

Perceptions about Rick and Hillary will evolve over the course of the campaign. Even Rick and Hillary themselves are uncertain about their performance on the campaign trail, and how the media and voters will respond to their personalities and personal histories. They don’t know whether Rick will come across as uninformed and ill prepared during a debate or when making a speech. They also don’t know whether Hillary will come across as unlikable, or whether a scandal will stick concerning her time as a cabinet secretary.

The longer the campaign, the more likely one of the candidates experiences scandal or a campaign misstep. The longer the campaign, the more time voters have to form opinions about leadership qualities, and the more likely one candidate stands apart on this dimension. This is consistent with recent evidence that voter preferences are more responsive to information on candidate quality than policy, and that moderate voters care mostly about character and competence.

On Election Day, the candidate whom the majority of voters believe is more likable, competent or trustworthy is likely to win election, as long as their policy is not “too extreme” compared with the other candidate. Policy platform matters a lot less here than in the case where a short campaign allows little opportunity to form opinions about leadership ability. In a longer campaign, Rick and Hillary recognize that a more moderate policy is less likely to be the deciding factor in the election. As a result, they have less incentive to moderate policy.

In this way, more informative campaigns can lead candidates to adopt less moderate policies. This increase in polarization hurts the average voter. At the same time, however, a more informed electorate is better able to assess the leadership characteristics of the candidates, which can lead to better decisions and benefit voters.

Whether or not longer, more informative campaigns make voters as a group worse off depends on how many voters are moderate. This is because moderate voters are hurt the most by an increase in campaign information, which always leads to more extreme policies than moderate voters prefer. Partisan voters, on the other hand, are hurt less by an increase in extremism, as it can lead some candidates to move closer to their ideal policy. More informative campaigns tend to make a sufficiently polarized electorate better off, and a sufficiently moderate electorate worse off.