Money and votes reconsidered: congressional elections, 1972?1982

Abstract

Scholars were quick to exploit the opportunities fo~ analysis offered by the new campaign finance data.Most of the early work focused on the question of how campaign spending influences election outcomes and the companion question of what determines how much money candidates raise and spend. A variety of models of campaign spending effects were proposed and examined. All took election outcomes to be a function of campaign spending and other variables but differed in how the outcome and spending variables were measured and in selection of control variables. These differences were reflected in several basic disagreements:i. On functional form. Proposed alternatives included linear functions (Shepard, 1977; Welch, 1974; Jacobson, 1976); semi-log (Welch, 1976); double-log (Welch 1974;Lott and Warner, 1974;Bental, Ben-Zion, and Moshel, 1977); and quadratic (Silberman and Yochum, 1978) for the money-votes relationship.2. On the measurement of relevant variables. For example, most models attempt to control the "normal vote"--the distribution of partisans--in a state or district. This has been approximated by party registration figures (Shepard, 1977; Welch, 1981;Caldeira and Patterson, 1982); district-level presidential votes (Welch, 1974(Welch, , 1981Silberman and Yochum, 1978), and previous votes for the same office or candidate (Jacobson, 1976(Jacobson, , 1978.3. On how the effects of incumbency are to be assessed. Incumbency is known to have a major impact on congressional election results and so, obviously, has to be taken into account. Most early models entered incumbency as a dummy variable (Welch, 1974; Jacobson, 1976;Shepard, 1977); others measured it as years in office, either logged (Giertz and Sullivan, 1977) or in quadratic form (Silberman and Yochum, 1978) to acknowledge diminishing returns.These early models generally overlooked the potential interaction between incumbency status and campaign-spending effects. But there was ample reason to expect that a given amount of spending would have different electoral effects for incumbents, challengers, and candidates for open seats. Later work confirmed that it did and indicated that the marginal returns on spending are much greater for challengers and other nonincumbents than for incumbents (Glantz, Abramowitz, and Burkhart, 1976; Jacobson, 1978;Silberman and Yochum, 1978).

The disadvantaged incumbents: estimating incumbency effects in Indian state legislatures

“…Among various factors given for increased incumbent security are incumbents' control over redistricting plans (Tufte 1973), increased franking privileges (Mayhew 1974), increased identification with the candidate rather than the party (Erikson 1971(Erikson , 1972Cover 1977;Ferejohn 1977) and increased bureaucratic resources available to incumbents (Fiorina 1977). Jacobson (1985Jacobson ( , 1987, however, argued that the incumbency advantage did not increase after the mid-1960s as the reelection chances of incumbents had not increased.…”

“…I use electricity, percentage of households with electricity as the source of lighting, as another measure of public good provision. The rate of voter turnout is used to represent voter activism 15 . I also control for per capita income of states, their population and the percent of population that is urbanized (percent urban).…”

“…The coefficient on electricity is negative, but insignificant. 17 In column (3), I include political 15 But the effect of voter turnout is ambiguous. For example, if voters are dissatisfied with the state of affairs, higher voter turnout may work against the incumbent implying a negative relationship.…”

Selling favors in the lab: experiments on campaign finance reform

“…For example, the literature linking campaign spending to vote shares hints at welfare effects, but does not provide a direct test of the effect of campaign finance restrictions. Work in this area includes, e.g., Jacobson (1980Jacobson ( , 1985Jacobson ( , 1989, Abramowitz (1988), Green and Krasno (1988), Levitt (1994) and Gerber (1998). Also, Stratmann (2004) reports data that suggest the effectiveness of campaign spending depends on whether states have campaign contributions caps, but he is also unable to offer direct evidence on any associated welfare consequences.…”

Interest groups: A survey of empirical models that try to assess their influence

“…When voters are completely informed and can punish legislators immediately, congressmen should vote as their constituency desires. Political power or 49 Giertz and Sullivan (1977), Jacobson (1985), Snyder (1990). 5o See, e.g., Austen-Smith and Wright (1994), Beghin (1990) and Snyder (1990) for nice illustrations of the assistance of a theoretical model in deriving (non-trivial) empirical hypotheses.…”