On paper, the role of local elections is to elect local politicians. However, a large descriptive literature finds that the decisions of local voters and campaigns are often, but not at all times or in all places, dominated by national issues.
This paper proposes a model to explain this heterogeneity. It focuses on the choices of parties to either run campaigns and inform voters on local issues, or to ride on the coattails of the national environment. Campaigning is worth it if it persuades enough voters.
Building on the empirical observation that the distribution of partisanship differs between regions (e.g. some will have more left wing voters, others more right wing), it argues that a uniform shift in national opinion will affect incentives in different regions differently. In some regions, a national shift will push more voters into reach, making campaigning more profitable. In others, the reverse. The paper then investigates differences between parties and the effects of polarization.
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