Campaign Finance

This is a page for students of PS 240. On November 3rd and 7th we discussed campaign finance.

Possible Exam Questions

1. 1 How does spending affect an election? Who gains by spending more? Does it matter?

Readings

B. Alexander (2005). Good Money and Bad Money: Do Funding Sources Affect Electoral Outcomes? Political Research Quarterly, 58, 353-358.

Summary: This article talks about the impact of out of state donations, PAC contributions, and self financing on election outcomes. It uses open seat House elections in four election cycles. It finds that certain types of fundraising, including PAC donations, increase success rates, while others, including self-financing, decrease success.

K. Bardwell (2003). Not All Money Is Equal: The Differential Effect of Spending by Incumbents and Challengers in Gubernatorial Primaries. State Politics & Policy Quarterly, 3, 294-308.

Summary: This study focuses on candidate spending in relation to popularity and success. It uses gubernatorial races from 1980-2000 finds that spending by incumbents has no independent impact on their success. For challengers, however, spending more will attract more votes. Overall, very few races are close enough to make challenger spending a deciding factor. These results suggest that in order to improve primary competition, states would have to increase public financing and spending limits.

G.C. Jacobson (2006). Campaign spending effects in U.S. Senate elections: Evidence from the National Annenberg Election Survey. Electoral Studies, 25, 195-226.

Summary: Overall, this study finds that challengers' increased spending benefits them more than increased spending helps incumbents. Over time, challengers gained support in direct proportion to their level of spending. Incumbents adjusted their spending in response to their challengers' changes and during this time the incumbents' familiarity and favorability increased as well. This was not, however, directly related to the incumbent's level of spending. Also, increased spending on this side of the challenger is a sign of electoral strength. This kind of a change in spending demonstrates that the challenger feels he or she has a chance at winning the election. On the other hand, increased spending for the incumbent is a sign of electoral weakness. If an incumbent spends more, this study suggests it is because he or she is trying to keep up with his or her challenger in the election.

K.M. Esterling (2007). Buying Expertise: Campaign Contributions and Attention to Policy Analysis in Congressional Committees. American Political Science Review, 101, 93-109.

Summary: Esterling examines the relationship between interest group hard money contributions and legislators’ attention to policy analysis. Groups tend to contribute more to members who have a high capacity to develop effective policies and legislation. Consequently, over the long term, these contributions create incentives for members of Congress to enhance their analytical capacity techniques. Members who have a higher latent analytical policymaking capacity tend to attract more contributions and at the same time tend to engage in analytical discourse in committee hearings. In addition, members with higher analytical capacity tend to disengage from discussions of the aspects of policies that are of interest to constituents. The results help shed new light on debates over campaign finance reform regarding the normative value of hard money contributions. (taken from the article’s abstract.)

M.C. Fellowes and Wolf, P. J. (2004). Funding Mechanisms and Policy Instruments: How Business Campaign Contributions Influence Congressional Votes. Political Research Quarterly, 57, 315-324.

Summary: This article discusses the effect of individual and PAC campaign contributions from business interests. They find that business use campaign contributions to influence regulatory and tax policies, but have much less influence on direct government spending.

S.B. Gordon (2001). All Votes Are Not Created Equal: Campaign Contributions and Critical Votes. Journal of Politics, 63, 249.

Summary: This article studies the ‘vote context’. It finds that contributions are more likely to influence a legislator’s vote when that vote means the difference between defeat and passing of a bill. Therefore while contributions influence only a small number of votes, they have a larger effect on legislation overall.