Gary C. Jacobson

The Effects of Campaign Spending in House Elections: New Evidence for Old Argument

The question of how campaign spending affects election results remains open because the simultaneity problem has proven so intractable. Green and Krasnos (1988) recent attempt to solve the problem - and to demonstrate that marginal returns on spending are as great for incumbents as for challengers - again comes up short. A panel feature of the ABC News/Washington Post Congressional District Poll conducted during the 1986 elections offers a fresh perspective on the question. Analysis of changes in voting intentions during the final six weeks of the campaign shows that, as the tainted OLS studies have invariably suggested, the amount spent by the challenger is far more important in accounting for voters decisions than is the amount spent by the incumbent.

Money and votes reconsidered: congressional elections, 1972–1982

ConclusionThe evolution of congressional campaign finance over the past decade is characterized by steady growth in campaign spending and other notable changes in campaign finance practices. The main purpose of the research reported here was to determine whether these changes have altered the effects of campaign spending on election outcomes. This required reexamination of auxiliary questions concerning how sending effects operate and can be measured; it also required facing the limits of what analysis of aggregate campaign spending data can tell us about money in elections.Replication of OLS and 2SLS analyses of campaign spending effects produced solidly consistent results over the six congressional elections held between 1972 and 1982. Taken at face value, the evidence is overwhelming that the challengers level of spending has a strong impact on the vote, whereas that of the incumbent has virtually no impact at all. But the evidence remains open to doubt on two grounds. One is the probable inadequacy of the 2SLS model (or, perhaps, any possible model), leaving the issue of simultaneity bias unsettled; if bias remains, the estimates exaggerate the electoral effects of the challengers campaign expenditures. The issue cannot be resolved with more of the same data but rather requires data of a different sort—surveys taken over the course of a sample of campaigns would do the trick. Meanwhile, I think it would be foolish to make policy on the assumption that bias is, in fact, substantial; the greatest likelihood remains that restrictions on campaign money will have the general effect of hurting challengers (Jacobson, 1979).The other doubtful, albeit equally stable, finding is that incumbents do not gain votes by spending in campaigns. No incumbent seems to believe it, and there is at least circumstantial evidence (from, for example, the 1982 elections) that their skepticism is quite justified. If so, the problem lies in the limits of what aggregate data of the kind analyzed here can tell us. Few incumbents do not spend heavily when they are strongly challenged. If both candidates spend beyond the point needed to become thoroughly familiar to voters, then the substance of the campaigns, the contents of campaign messages, become the dominant factors. Incumbents may need to spend money in order to change the message as new circumstances arise, to frame new issues that would help them most (or damage them least) to win the battle of establishing the real issues. Like nonincumbents, sitting members may sometimes need to spend beyond a certain threshold to remain competitive; but nearly all of them do so when the necessity arises, so aggregate spending data are largely uninformative. How the money is spent, rather than how much, is what matters.The two most notable developments in congressional campaign finance have opposing implications. National party organizations, particularly the Republican, have assumed an increasingly important role in financing campaigns. Greater central control leads to a more efficient distribution of the partys collective campaign resources, which, among other things, promises to raise the overall level of electoral competition. It also leads to more coordinated campaigning, with greater emphasis on national themes and programs. Thus it should foster more cooperation and loyalty among fellow partisans in Congress. But PACs have also grown in numbers and in financial importance. Because most concentrate on gaining access to incumbents, they do little to make elections more competitive. Because they usually pursue narrowly defined interests, their influence fragments the Congress and weakens party coalitions. In this and other ways, parties and PACs are natural rivals; the most consequential decisions taken in the next round in campaign finance policy will be those which affect the relative importance of parties and PACs.See U.S. Congress (1984), for comments on this and other current campaign finance issues.

The Marginals Never Vanished: Incumbency and Competition in Elections to the U.S. House OfRepresentatives, 1952-1982

The average vote margin enjoyed by incumbent candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives increased sharply during the 1960s. Despite this, and contrary to assumptions common in the literature on recent congressional elections, electoral data show that House incumbents are no safer now than they were in the 1950s, the marginals, properly defined, have not vanished; the swing ratio has diminished little, if at all; and competition for House seats held by incumbents has not declined. Vote margins increased without adding to incumbent security, diminishing competition, or dampening swings because the heterogeneity of interelection vote swings increased at the same time.

Checking Out: The Effects of Bank Overdrafts on the 1992 House Elections

The revelation that hundreds of House members had regularly overdrawn their checking accounts with the House bank without penalty injected a new and unanticipated issue into the 1992 elections. The consequences were profound. The scandal was a major reason for the unusually high turnover of House seats in 1992. Bank overdrafts contributed significantly to exit by all routes: retirement, defeat in the primary election, and defeat in the general election. Overdrafts did not automatically spell disaster for incumbents, however; a record of bad checks was far more damaging when exploited by an experienced, well-financed challenger.

Checks and Choices: The House Bank Scandal's Impact on Voters in 1992

Analysis of the 1992 American National Election Study (ANES) data indicates that the House bank scandal reduced the vote for House incumbents by approximately five percentage points. The scandal mainly affected the small subset of voters who were most offended by bank overdrafts and who did not assume that their representative had a clean record. Fortunately for members who had written bad checks, voters who knew about the transgression were least disposed to be outraged by it, while the voters most disposed to outrage were also most inclined to believe the guilty were innocent. The explanation for these curious patterns is that voters who faced the option of condemning an incumbent they otherwise appreciated or dismissing the offense as inconsequential often chose the latter course. The damage was also moderated by partisanship; voters of the incumbents party showed a strong tendency to err in the incumbents favor in assessing involvement in the scandal. The classical theory of cognitive dissonance readily explains both phenomena.

Party Organization and Distribution of Campaign Resources: Republicans and Democrats in 1982

In congressional elections, the collective interests of a party do not coincide with the individual intersts of each of its candidates. The partys optimal distribution of campaign resources will not be optimal for every candidate and vice versa. This instance of the familiar collective goods problem creates a potentially important role for national party organizations. To the degree they control campaign resources and use them to pursue collective interests, national party organizations will have an important role in shaping elections. Their capacity to impose an efficient distribution of campaign resources promises more victories for a partys candidates than would occur without it.

Incumbents' Advantages in the 1978 U. S. Congressional Elections

The 1978 National Election Study has provided us with a wide variety of data to help explain the advantages that incumbents have recently enjoyed in elections for the U.S. House. The incumbent has advantages over challengers in levels of familiarity, frequency of contact, and evaluations; contestants for open seats rank between incumbents and challengers on these items. An analysis of variables related to voting decisions shows that incumbents benefit from many different things that they do: advertising, credit claiming on services, and position taking on issues, as well as development of a home style that enhances their image. They also benefit from having obscure, inexperienced opponents who are usually short of resources and therefore do not become familiar to voters.

The Impact of Broadcast Campaigning on Electoral Outcomes

In 1971 Congress passed a law aimed at curbing the rising cost of political campaining by restricting the amount of money candidates for federal office may spend on a variety of campaing media, including television and radio. More recently, overall restrictions on campaing expenditures have been enacted. The principal justification for these reforms is that they will limit the influence of money and the moneyed on elections and, consequently, on the political process as a whole. The most obvious danger of such retrictions is that they will make it more difficult than ever to unseat incumbents, who already enjoy excessive electoral advantages. This paper is intended to contribute to an assessment of the potential consequences of specific kinds of spending limitaions through an analysis of the impact of radio and television campaign expenditures on electoral outcomes. The effects of broadcast spending will be measured in conjunction with those of incumbency and constituency party strength in order to provide necessary controls and to determine the comparitive impact of these two additional variables on election results.

The Electoral Origins of Polarized Politics Evidence From the 2010 Cooperative Congressional Election Study

Data from the 2010 Cooperative Congressional Election Study are examined to determine the extent to which partisan polarization is a popular as well as an elite phenomenon. The evidence indicates that ordinary Americans as well as political elites divide consistently along party lines over a broad range of issues and legislative preferences. Partisan ideological divisions are not confined to the political class; they extend downward into the citizenry to the degree that people are actively involved in politics. The coincidence of partisan differences across issues results in a bimodal distribution of aggregate preferences among voters, showing that partisan sorting can by itself polarize the electorate even if sorted partisans do not adopt extreme positions on individual issues. The distribution of partisan preferences is even more sharply bimodal and polarized when the electoral constituencies of the congressional parties are compared, so the electoral process sustains elite polarization. Primary electoral constituencies tend to be even more extreme, particularly on the Republican side, deterring departures from party orthodoxy and thus movement toward the median voter.

It’s Nothing Personal: The Decline of the Incumbency Advantage in US House Elections

With little fanfare, the electoral advantage enjoyed by US representatives has fallen over the past several elections to levels not seen since the 1950s. The incumbency advantage has diminished in conjunction with an increase in party loyalty, straight-ticket voting, and president-centered electoral nationalization, products of the widening and increasingly coherent partisan divisions in the American electorate. Consequently, House incumbents now have a much harder time retaining districts that lean toward the rival party. Democrats had been the main beneficiaries of the denationalization of electoral politics that had enabled the incumbency advantage to grow, and they have thus been the main victims of the reemergence of a more party-centered electoral process. Republicans enjoy a long-standing structural advantage in the distribution of partisans across districts, so this trend has strengthened their grip on the House even as they have become less competitive in contests for the presidency.