Electoral Campaign Strategies and Information Embeddedness in Zimbabwe

• In Event: Political Behavior under Electoral Authoritarianism

Abstract

How do party activists influence voters? Importantly, which strategies are used among which types of voters and how effective are they at building support for the party? We build on a rich past body of work that seeks to understand who is targeted with positive and negative inducements from party activists/agents/brokers and how voters respond to these inducements in their electoral behavior. We argue that past research is largely mixed and inconclusive with regards to which types of voters are targeted with which types of inducements because they focus on attributes of the voters rather than the attributes of voters that are known to party brokers. We present a theory that directly considers the role of information and then test it using original data from a three-wave panel survey around Zimbabwe's 2023 Harmonized Elections. We find that the ruling party uses a wide range of strategies and that information conditions their choices regarding who is targeted in what way.

Authors

• Nicole Beardsworth, University of Pretoria

• Ioanna Gkoutna, University College London

• Adam Harris, University College London