IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ebl/ecbull/eb-08d70004.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The impact of money on elections: evidence from open seat races in the United States House of Representatives, 1990-2004

Author

Listed:
  • Franklin Mixon, Jr.

    (Auburn University)

  • Steven Caudill

    (Auburn University)

  • Christopher Duquette

    (Center for Naval Analyses)

Abstract

A binary win/loss model is constructed and estimated on the results from 1990-2004 contests for open U.S. House seats. The results indicate that election outcomes are highly sensitive to the major-party candidates' campaign spending ratios, and increases in spending ratios are shown to translate into non-trivial increases the candidate''s probability of winning, a result that holds for both Republicans and Democrats. The payoff to high levels of spending explains why it''s so attractive for candidates to outspend their opponents by large margins.

Suggested Citation

  • Franklin Mixon, Jr. & Steven Caudill & Christopher Duquette, 2008. "The impact of money on elections: evidence from open seat races in the United States House of Representatives, 1990-2004," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 4(2), pages 1-12.
    • Handle: RePEc:ebl:ecbull:eb-08d70004
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.accessecon.com/pubs/EB/2008/Volume4/EB-08D70004A.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bender, Bruce, 1988. "An Analysis of Congressional Voting on Legislation Limiting Congressional Campaign Expenditures," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 96(5), pages 1005-1021, October.
    2. Levitt, Steven D & Snyder, James M, Jr, 1997. "The Impact of Federal Spending on House Election Outcomes," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 105(1), pages 30-53, February.
    3. Franklin Mixon & Kamal Upadhayaya, 1998. "Does federal electoral redistricting induce congressional quits? An empirical note," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 5(2), pages 61-63.
    4. Gary Jacobson, 1985. "Money and votes reconsidered: congressional elections, 1972–1982," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 47(1), pages 7-62, January.
    5. Alan Gerber, 2004. "Does campaign spending work?," Natural Field Experiments 00246, The Field Experiments Website.
    6. Caudill, Steven B., 2003. "Predicting discrete outcomes with the maximum score estimator: the case of the NCAA men's basketball tournament," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 19(2), pages 313-317.
    7. Lott, John R, Jr, 1991. "Does Additional Campaign Spending Really Hurt Incumbents? The Theoretical Importance of Past Investments in Political Brand Name," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 72(1), pages 87-92, October.
    8. Abramowitz, Alan I., 1988. "Explaining Senate Election Outcomes," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 82(2), pages 385-403, June.
    9. Steven Caudill & Norman Godwin, 2002. "Heterogeneous skewness in binary choice models: Predicting outcomes in the men's NCAA basketball tournament," Journal of Applied Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 29(7), pages 991-1001.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Pastine, Ivan & Pastine, Tuvana, 2012. "Incumbency advantage and political campaign spending limits," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(1), pages 20-32.
    2. Christopher Duquette & Franklin Mixon & Richard Cebula, 2013. "The Impact of Legislative Tenure and Seniority on General Election Success: Econometric Evidence from U.S. House Races," Atlantic Economic Journal, Springer;International Atlantic Economic Society, vol. 41(2), pages 161-172, June.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. repec:ebl:ecbull:v:4:y:2008:i:2:p:1-12 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Julia Cage & Edgard Dewitte, 2021. "It Takes Money to Make MPs: Evidence from 150 Years of British Campaign Spending," Sciences Po publications 2021-08, Sciences Po.
    3. Bekkouche, Yasmine & Cagé, Julia & Dewitte, Edgard, 2022. "The heterogeneous price of a vote: Evidence from multiparty systems, 1993–2017," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 206(C).
    4. Bekkouche, Yasmine & Cagé, Julia & Dewitte, Edgard, 2022. "The heterogeneous price of a vote: Evidence from multiparty systems, 1993–2017," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 206(C).
    5. Yasmine Bekkouche & Julia Cage, 2019. "The Heterogeneous Price of a Vote: Evidence from France, 1993-2014," SciencePo Working papers Main hal-03393084, HAL.
    6. Cagé, Julia & Bekkouche, Yasmine, 2018. "The Heterogeneous Price of a Vote: Evidence from France, 1993-2014," CEPR Discussion Papers 12614, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    7. Yasmine Bekkouche & Julia Cage & Edgard Dewitte, 2022. "The Heterogeneous Price of a Vote: Evidence from Multiparty Systems, 1993-2017," SciencePo Working papers Main hal-03389172, HAL.
    8. Thomas Evans, 2007. "An empirical test of why incumbents adopt campaign spending limits," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 132(3), pages 437-456, September.
    9. Yasmine Bekkouche & Julia Cage, 2018. "The Price of a Vote: Evidence from France, 1993-2014," Working Papers Series 68, Institute for New Economic Thinking.
    10. repec:hal:wpspec:info:hdl:2441/1dp7827s4n8ht8fk3qhmeuvd0o is not listed on IDEAS
    11. Julia Cage & Edgard Dewitte, 2021. "It Takes Money to Make MPs: Evidence from 150 Years of British Campaign Spending," SciencePo Working papers Main hal-03384143, HAL.
    12. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/1dp7827s4n8ht8fk3qhmeuvd0o is not listed on IDEAS
    13. Julia Cage & Yasmine Bekkouche, 2018. "The Price of a Vote: Evidence from France, 1993-2014," SciencePo Working papers Main hal-03393149, HAL.
    14. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/7rcgbs4v788terphdvb6a5e8t8 is not listed on IDEAS
    15. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/10lirmbd5p8h4ae52oi51b4cka is not listed on IDEAS
    16. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/2ahul47tb09rvqfl9eelv7o5ca is not listed on IDEAS
    17. repec:hal:wpspec:info:hdl:2441/2ahul47tb09rvqfl9eelv7o5ca is not listed on IDEAS
    18. repec:hal:wpspec:info:hdl:2441/10lirmbd5p8h4ae52oi51b4cka is not listed on IDEAS
    19. Stekler, H.O. & Sendor, David & Verlander, Richard, 2010. "Issues in sports forecasting," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 26(3), pages 606-621, July.
      • Herman O. Stekler & David Sendor & Richard Verlander, 2009. "Issues in Sports Forecasting," Working Papers 2009-002, The George Washington University, Department of Economics, H. O. Stekler Research Program on Forecasting.
    20. Kenneth Benoit & Michael Marsh, 2008. "The Campaign Value of Incumbency: A New Solution to the Puzzle of Less Effective Incumbent Spending," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 52(4), pages 874-890, October.
    21. Laurent Bouton & Micael Castanheira & Allan Drazen, 2018. "A Theory of Small Campaign Contributions," NBER Working Papers 24413, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    22. Matthew T. Cole & Ivan Pastine & Tuvana Pastine, 2018. "Incumbency Advantage in an Electoral Contest," The Economic and Social Review, Economic and Social Studies, vol. 49(4), pages 419-436.
    23. Yogesh Uppal, 2010. "Estimating Incumbency Effects In U.S. State Legislatures: A Quasi‐Experimental Study," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 22(2), pages 180-199, July.
    24. Ivan Pastine & Tuvana Pastine, 2010. "Political Campaign Spending Limits," Economics Department Working Paper Series n213-10.pdf, Department of Economics, National University of Ireland - Maynooth.
    25. Potters, Jan & Sloof, Randolph, 1996. "Interest groups: A survey of empirical models that try to assess their influence," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 12(3), pages 403-442, November.
    26. Freille, S. & Avramovich, C. & Moncarz, P. & Sofietti, P., 2019. "Inside the revolving door: campaign finance, lobbying meetings and public contracts. An investigation for Argentina," Research Department working papers 1392, CAF Development Bank Of Latinamerica.
    27. Paul Kvam & Joel S. Sokol, 2006. "A logistic regression/Markov chain model for NCAA basketball," Naval Research Logistics (NRL), John Wiley & Sons, vol. 53(8), pages 788-803, December.
    28. del Corral, Julio & Prieto-Rodríguez, Juan, 2010. "Are differences in ranks good predictors for Grand Slam tennis matches?," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 26(3), pages 551-563, July.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    public choice;

    JEL classification:

    • D7 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making
    • H3 - Public Economics - - Fiscal Policies and Behavior of Economic Agents

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ebl:ecbull:eb-08d70004. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: John P. Conley (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.