The Instrumental Voter Goes to the Newsagent: Demand for Information, Marginality and the Media

This article studies the impact of instrumental voting on information demand and mass media behaviour during electoral campaigns. If voters act instrumentally then information demand should increase with the closeness of an election. If mass media are profit-maximizing firms then information supply should be larger in electoral constituencies where the contest is expected to be closer, delivery costs are lower and customers are on average more profitable for advertisers. The impact of the size of the electorate is theoretically undetermined. These conclusions are derived within a formal model of information demand and supply, and then tested, with good results, on data from the 1997 general election in Britain