Abstract: This work proposes a theoretical framework to address the issue of how an entrant manages to differentiate from incumbents on political competition, specifically on non-policy related attributes, despite the inherent difficulties of entry, such as economic and legal barriers, reduced capacities for campaigning, resource limitations, among others. The framework shows that when the entrant is relatively better valued than the incumbents on non-policy factors, the threat of entry forces the incumbents to allocate more resources on improving their non-policy valuation from the electorate. Also, that entrant party tends to adopt moderate policy positions when incumbents choose similar platforms. Finally, there exists a multiplicity of equilibria on policy competition among the incumbents, with only one symmetric equilibrium.