How Trump Triumphed:Multi-candidate Primaries with Buffoons

Micael Castanheira, Steffen Huck and Johannes Leutgeb

No 2020-45, Working Papers ECARES from ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles

Abstract: While people on all sides of the political spectrum were amazed that Donald Trump won the Republican nomination this paper demonstrates that Trump’s victory was not a crazy event but rather the equilibrium outcome of a multi-candidate race where one candidate, the buffoon, is viewed as likely to self-destruct and hence unworthy of attack. We model such primaries as a truel (a three-way duel), solve for its equilibrium, and test its implications in the lab. We find that people recognize a buffoon when they see one and aim their attacks elsewhere with the unfortunate consequence that the buffoon has an enhanced probability of winning. This result is strongest amongst those subjects who demonstrate an ability to best respond suggesting that our results would only be stronger when this game is played by experts and for higher stakes.

Keywords: truel; political primaries; Trump (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C72 C92 D72 D74 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 56 p.
Date: 2020-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-pke and nep-pol
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published by:

Downloads: (external link)
https://dipot.ulb.ac.be/dspace/bitstream/2013/3132 ... _LETGEB-howtrump.pdf Full text for the whole work, or for a work part (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: How Trump triumphed: Multi-candidate primaries with buffoons (2023)
Working Paper: How Trump Triumphed: Multi-Candidate Primaries with Buffoons (2023)
Working Paper: How Trump triumphed: Multi-candidate primaries with buffoons (2022)
Working Paper: How Trump triumphed: Multi-candidate primaries with buffoons (2020)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eca:wpaper:2013/313296

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://hdl.handle.ne ... lb.ac.be:2013/313296

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers ECARES from ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Benoit Pauwels ().