Party competition sometimes resembles an auction, where parties seek to ‘buy’ elections by promising more spending and/or tax cuts than their rivals. In this paper, I argue that whether parties engage in this practice will depend on political circumstances, such as the level of ideological polarisation. Incentives to promise more to voters will also vary depending on a party’s electoral prospects: for parties that expect a significant level of government responsibility, promising too much is a risky strategy. I test these arguments by focusing on the degree of fiscal expansionism in party manifestos from 20 countries over the period 1944-2017. In line with expectations, parties tend to make more expansionary election pledges when ideological competition is more muted. In addition, parties’ fiscal policies are found to be strongly influenced by their projected seat shares based on opinion polls from before the start of the election campaign. Specifically, the stronger a party’s electoral prospects, the more fiscally conservative it tends to be, and vice versa. This is the case even when controlling for other relevant factors such as economic conditions and party ideology. The findings have implications for how we view election manifestos and, more broadly, for debates about the consequences of party polarisation and the relative merits of single party versus coalition governments.
