Effects Of Campaign Spending Research Articles

Does Money Help Elections? Analysis of the Impact of Campaign Spending and Incumbency in Ecuador

Restricting policies on electoral spending are intended to equalize the conditions of participation of candidates for a seat in a popular election. However, does the application of these restrictions generate equity in the electoral contest, or the opposite? There is much evidence about the advantage of the candidate who is reelected (incumbent) against his contender (challenger), which questions whether the budget restriction on electoral spending is effective in itself. For this research, we used a multiple linear regression method that measures the effects of the effectiveness of campaign spending in attracting votes from candidates for mayor of Ecuador, resulting in incumbency providing a degree of advantage over challengers. much more than the efficiency of spending, all in a highly restrictive scenario in electoral budgets and political campaign time.

Money and Politics: The Effects of Campaign Spending Limits on Political Entry and Competition

This paper studies the effects of campaign spending limits on the political entry, selection, and behavior of local politicians in Brazil. We analyze a reform that limits campaign spending for mayoral elections. The limits were implemented with a discontinuity that we exploit for causal identification. We find that stricter limits reduce reelection rates and increase political competition by attracting more candidates who are also less wealthy and rely less on self-financing. Despite their effects on electoral outcomes, stricter limits did not lead to significant short-run improvements in policy outcomes, such as in education and health. (JEL D72, O17)

The effect of endogenous campaign spending and voter heterogeneity on candidates' vote share: Empirical evidence from Taiwanese local elections

The effect of candidates' campaign spending is conditional on voter characteristics, but this relationship has rarely been examined due to voter anonymity in election data. This paper addresses this concern by using a random-coefficients logit demand model to allow for voter heterogeneity in the estimation, while campaign spending is considered to be endogenous. Using election data from Taiwan, empirical results show that the effect of campaign spending on vote share is positive and significant for the areas with more voters over 65 years old, more high-income earners and fewer college graduates. The results reveal the electoral culture in Taiwan that relies heavily on local power brokers, whose channeling of campaign spending more likely affects older and wealthier but less-educated voters. Empirical results also show that the marginal effect of campaign spending is larger for the challengers than the incumbents, while the vote share is more spending-elastic for the incumbents than the challengers.

The petit effect of campaign spending on votes: using political financing reforms to measure spending impacts in multiparty elections

This paper explores the relation between campaign spending and votes, in France, relying on political financing reforms as a quasi-natural experiment to assess if and how spending affects votes, for both incumbent and challenger candidates in multiparty legislative elections. The French reforms were adopted in the mid-1990s, modifying the fundraising rules in three important ways: (1) spending limits were reduced, (2) legal entities no longer were allowed to fund candidates, and (3) the maximal amount of candidates’ personal campaign spending reimbursed by the State was raised. We study observations on two consecutive legislative elections, one before and one after the reforms. The difference in campaign expenses across elections turns out to be strongly affected by the reforms: candidates from the extreme parties (far left and far right) increased their expenditures substantially, while the candidates fielded by moderate parties reduced them considerably. Focusing on politicians running in both elections, we estimate the impact of spending using first-difference panel data methods and TSLS. Our instrumental variables for the difference in spending are constructed from the regulatory reforms. We find that spending by incumbents did not have statistically significant effects on their vote shares. Spending by challengers is statistically significant but the impact nevertheless is economically small.

The effect of campaign spending, district magnitude and incumbency when electoral rules create districts with old and new voters: the case of Chile in 2017

The impact of campaign spending, generally greater for challengers than for incumbents, is conditioned by electoral rules and incumbency—normally seen as a dichotomous condition. But when an electoral reform changes the composition of districts, a legislator is an incumbent only in the section of the new district. In Chile, the 60 open-list proportional representation 2-member districts used until 2013 were combined to create 28 open-list PR districts for the 2017 election, thus making some legislators enjoy a higher degree of incumbency. With data from 1430 candidates in the 2013 and 2017 legislative elections, we report a nonlinear positive effect of campaign spending on electoral success in all district magnitudes. Campaign spending has a higher impact as the number of open seats increases and a stronger effect for incumbents whose old districts comprise a larger share of the new districts. Campaign spending matters differently for challengers and incumbents given the moderating effect of district magnitude, the number of open seats and the percentage of incumbency.

한국 국회의원 선거에서의 선거비용과 선거 결과: 제이콥슨 효과( Jacobson Effect)의 한국적 적용

한국 국회의원 선거에서의 선거비용과 선거 결과: 제이콥슨 효과( Jacobson Effect)의 한국적 적용

BLP-2LASSO for aggregate discrete choice models with rich covariates

Summary We introduce the BLP-2LASSO model, which augments the classic BLP (Berry, Levinsohn, and Pakes, 1995) random-coefficients logit model to allow for data-driven selection among a high-dimensional set of control variables using the 'double-LASSO' procedure proposed by Belloni, Chernozhukov, and Hansen (2013). Economists often study consumers’ aggregate behaviour across markets choosing from a menu of differentiated products. In this analysis, local demographic characteristics can serve as controls for market-specific preference heterogeneity. Given rich demographic data, implementing these models requires specifying which variables to include in the analysis, an ad hoc process typically guided primarily by a researcher’s intuition. We propose a data-driven approach to estimate these models, applying penalized estimation algorithms from the recent literature in high-dimensional econometrics. Our application explores the effect of campaign spending on vote shares in data from Mexican elections.

Systemic Effects of Campaign Spending: Evidence from Corporate Contribution Bans in US State Legislatures

In this paper, I examine the systemic effects of campaign spending, looking at outcomes at the level of the legislature rather than the individual seat. Using a difference-in-differences design, I show that state-level corporate campaign contribution bans have a large effect on electoral outcomes at the legislature level. A 1 percentage-point increase in the Democratic (or Republican) party’s share of all contributions in an electoral cycle is estimated to increase its share of the legislature by roughly half a percentage point. Policy outcomes as well as campaign finance reforms occur at the legislature level; understanding the systemic rather than individual-level effect of campaign spending is therefore directly relevant. Aggregating estimated effects of individual-level campaign finance would not produce this same estimate owing to spillovers and other strategic dynamics. Taken together, the analyses suggest that contribution bans have important electoral effects and thus point to the systemic effects of campaign spending.

Does campaign spending affect electoral outcomes?

This study investigates the effect of candidates' expenditure on elections' results focusing on run-off elections' data. Our analysis, based on all run-off municipal elections in Israel between 1993 and 2008, shows that candidates' share of the vote is not substantially affected by their campaign spending. This outcome contradicts recent results showing that, in a developing country where voting is compulsory, campaign expenditures have a significant effect on vote shares. Yet, it is in line with the evidence of earlier studies based on developed countries showing that the effect of campaign spending is limited. This leads us to suggest that campaign spending may be effective in developing countries with consolidating democracies because compulsory voting forces the relative poor population to turn out and vote, and this population is relatively more impressionable by campaign spending on media advertisements.

Closing the Gap in State Legislative Races: The Effect of Campaign Spending on Ballot Drop-off

This article analyzes ballot drop-off in state legislative elections. Publicly available campaign finance information and election turnout results from the State of Oregon from 2008-2014 were used to test the collective and individual effects of various campaign expenditures on ballot drop-off. The results show that overall campaign expenditures have a statistically significant effect on reducing ballot drop-off. However, the effects of specific types of expenditures vary; media and professional expenditures help to reduce ballot drop-off, but field and general office expenditures have little effect.

How Do Campaigns Matter?

A review of the evidence leaves no doubt election campaigns do matter in a variety of important ways. The serious questions concern when, where, why, how, for what, and for whom they matter. This essay reviews a selection of high-quality studies that address these questions, focusing on several distinct lines of research that have been particularly productive in recent years: on the effects of events and advertising in presidential elections; on the effects of campaign spending in elections for down-ballot offices; on the effects of mobilization campaigns on voting turnout; on campaign influences on the vote choice (with special attention to the effects of negative campaigns); and on the nature of persuadable voters. It also offers some suggestions of areas where additional research should be productive.

BLP-Lasso for Aggregate Discrete Choice Models of Elections with Rich Demographic Covariates

Economists often study consumers' aggregate behavior across markets choosing from a menu of differentiated products. In this analysis, local demographic characteristics can serve as controls for market-specific heterogeneity in product preferences. Given rich demographic data, implementing these models requires specifying which variables to include in the analysis, an ad hoc process typically guided primarily by a researcher's intuition. We propose a data-driven approach to estimate these models applying penalized estimation algorithms imported from the machine learning literature along with confidence intervals that are robust to variable selection. Our application explores the effect of campaign spending on vote shares in data from Mexican elections.

BLP-Lasso for Aggregate Discrete Choice Models of Elections with Rich Demographic Covariates

Economists often study consumers’ aggregate behavior across markets choosing from a menu of differentiated products. In this analysis, local demographic characteristics can serve as controls for market-specific heterogeneity in product preferences. Given rich demographic data, implementing these models requires specifying which variables to include in the analysis, an ad hoc process typically guided primarily by a researcher’s intuition. We propose a data-driven approach to estimate these models applying penalized estimation algorithms imported from the machine learning literature along with confidence intervals that are robust to variable selection. Our application explores the effect of campaign spending on vote shares in data from Mexican elections.

Election Fundamentals and Polls Favor the Republicans

Election Fundamentals and Polls Favor the Republicans

Buying Local Votes: The Effect of Individual Campaign Spending Under a Semi-Open PR System in the Belgian Local Elections

This article analyses the effect of campaign spending on the individual result of party candidates in the Belgian local elections. An analysis of data concerning the 2012 local elections in the Flemish region shows that candidates who spend more in absolute terms or outspend their rivals (at the list and the municipality level) obtain a better result, even though the size of the effect is small. Contrary to what was found for national elections, there are indications that spending affects the odds of obtaining a seat in the local council. The spending effect tends to be weaker for candidates holding an executive office in the municipality.

Campaign Spending and Electoral Competition: Towards More Policy Relevant Research1

There is a long-standing scholarly literature on the electoral effects of campaign spending. Nevertheless, the academic research offers only limited guidance for policy makers interested in campaign finance reform. In part, this is because existing studies have focused narrowly on some vexing statistical issues. But it is also because political scientists have not devoted enough effort to conducting evaluation studies of how regulatory policies impact the intermediate goal of competition, let alone the ultimate policy goals of reduced corruption, increased citizen participation, and improved public policy. Consequently, there is a great need for updated and improved analyses of the treatment effect of campaign spending on political competition in a variety of electoral contexts, but an even greater need for the application of modern evaluation methods to the more basic question of whether campaign finance reforms “work” as advertised.

Does Campaign Spending Affect Electoral Outcomes?

This study investigates the effect of candidates’ expenditure on elections’ results focusing on run-off elections’ data. Our analysis, based on all the available run-off municipal elections in Israel between 1993 and 2008, shows that candidates’ share of the vote is not substantially affected by their campaign spending. The effect is not substantial even though campaign expenditures in local elections is considerable, averaging $11 per constituent. This outcome contradicts recent results in the related literature showing that, in a developing country where voting is compulsory, campaign expenditures have a significant effect on vote shares. Yet, it is in line with the evidence of earlier studies based on developed countries showing that the effect of campaign spending is limited. This leads us to suggest that campaign spending is effective in developing countries because compulsory voting forces the relative poor population to turn out and vote, and this population is relatively more impressionable by campaign spending on media advertisements.

Campaign Spending and Voter Participation in State Legislative Elections

ObjectivePrevious studies demonstrate that campaigns play an important role in mobilizing citizen participation in elections. The present analysis examines the effects of campaign spending on voter turnout in the state legislative setting where our knowledge of campaign effects is quite limited.MethodIn an examination of state legislative elections across 20 states over two election cycles, the analysis considers the influence of candidate spending on voter turnout.ResultsThe findings demonstrate that campaign spending has a strong influence on voter participation; however, this effect is mitigated by contextual features. Legislative professionalism reduces the influence of spending, while the presence of a high‐stimulus statewide election enhances it. In addition, challenger spending is more effective at stimulating participation than incumbent spending.ConclusionsHigher levels of campaign spending increase voter participation in state legislative elections; however, these effects vary according to context. These findings have important implications for theories of participation in American democracy as well for normative issues concerning the role of money in elections.

Aggregate Effects of Campaign Spending

Perhaps no other issue surrounding the health of our democracy worries American voters more than the role of money in elections, and campaign finance reform is a salient topic as a result. Academic studies of campaign finance, however, have focused their analyses at the level of the individual campaign -- relevant for a variety of important questions but not calibrated for studying the impact of policy instruments that affect the entire legislature at once. I offer a new focus on the systemic effects of campaign spending. Using a natural experiment in U.S. state legislatures, I find that a ten percentage point increase in the Democratic (or Republican) share of total campaign contributions causes a five percentage point increase in the Democratic (or Republican) share of the legislature. Campaign spending has a large effect on electoral outcomes, and regulations on which groups are permitted to donate are a potent policy lever.

The effects of party campaign spending under proportional representation: Evidence from Germany

Most of the literature investigating the effects of campaign spending on electoral outcomes focuses on individual candidates in majoritarian systems. This paper contributes to the literature on the effectiveness of party campaign spending on party vote shares under systems of proportional representation. German data are used to test several hypotheses derived from a simple election contest model. The results are mixed and only partially support the hypothesis of a positive effect of campaign spending on a party's vote share.