PUBPOL 201 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Diminishing Returns
Document Summary
Campaigns spend a lot of time and effort fundraising. Abramowitz says eventually they need a name and branding as well, not just money. Candidates who out-fundraised their opponents were 24 times more likely to win election in 2016. Winning congressional candidates outspent their opponents by about 20 to 1. Winning candidates on average spent . 3 million. Last year, the country ran controlled experiments in 435 different places, putting a number of candidates up against one another and tracking how much each raised and spent. By combining data from the center for responsive politics (the people behind campaign money site open secrets) and the actual 2012 results, we"re able to get a sense for how money and vote totals correlate. That our shorthand for political success more money, more votes was validated in 2012. (the atlantic, 2013) Shows a pretty steep relationship between how much money you spend and how well you do.
