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The Benefits of Campaign Spending
by John J. Coleman
 John J. Coleman, professor in and associate chair of the Department of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, is the author of 
Party Decline in America: Policy, Politics, and the Fiscal State.
No. 84
Critics of American politics often say thatspending on electoral campaigns harms ourdemocracy. They charge that the money goes forcynical, negative, and misleading advertise-ments that alienate the public from politics andelections.Political scientists have collected and ana-lyzed data on the connection between campaignspending and civic life. The data bear on severalquestions at issue in campaign finance debates:Does campaign spending reduce public trust?Does it reduce levels of citizen involvement in orattention to campaigns? Does it lower citizens’knowledge of information relevant to theirvotes? Who benefits from campaign spending?Studies indicate that campaign spendingdoes
not 
diminish trust, efficacy, and involve-ment, contrary to what critics charge. Moreover,spending
increases
public knowledge of the can-didates, across essentially all groups in the pop-ulation. Less spending on campaigns is not like-ly to increase public trust, involvement, or atten-tion. Implicit or explicit spending limits reducepublic knowledge during campaigns. Gettingmore money into campaigns should, on thewhole, be beneficial to American democracy.
September 4, 2003
 
Introduction
For more than a decade, campaignfinance has been a topic of national debateand, in 2002, legislation. Substantial scholar-ly and public discussion has focused on thecontributions side of campaign finance: whocontributes, how much, and with what effecton the making of public policy? An equallyimportant but underdeveloped discussionexamines candidate spending: what benefitsfor democracy, if any, flow from campaignspending?Positions on the latter question in thepublic reform discussion have been clear. Toone camp, campaign spending is politicalspeech that deserves protection. More speechmeans more information, and more informa-tion produces an enlightened and active citi-zenry. Candidates and parties rationally usecampaign spending to inform the publicabout candidates’ policy preferences. By con-tributing to the quality and quantity of pub-lic discourse and by making political elitesaccountable to the governed, campaignspending builds political community.Unlimited campaign spending is a boost fordemocracy.
1
To the other camp, unlimited campaignspending undermines democratic values.Legislators spend inordinate time raisingfunds to create a bipartisan incumbent pro-tection scheme that hobbles challengers andgrants access and favors to contributors.Money is spent on cynical, negative, and mis-leading campaign advertisements. The pub-lic becomes skeptical or, even worse, apathet-ic and uninvolved, and campaign spendingfails to enlighten or engage the public.
2
Researchers have explored most of thecontentious points raised in the public dis-cussion of campaign contributions. Researchon campaign spending, on the other hand,has been narrower than the public discus-sion, focusing largely on the extent to whichcampaign spending contributes to electoralvictory. In this paper, I report on the resultsof several studies I conducted that examinethe connection between campaign spendingand civic life. In particular, those studiesexamine the connection between spendingand public trust, perceptions of efficacy (thefeeling that being involved in politics makesa difference), levels of involvement in andattention paid to campaigns, and electorallyrelevant knowledge—all key components of avibrant political communityDespite the concerns of reformers, cam-paign spending produces generally beneficialeffects. Campaign spending makes an impor-tant contribution to key aspects of democra-tic life, such as public knowledge, and doesnot damage public trust or involvement.
The Effect of CampaignSpending on Public Trustand Involvement
The complaints about campaign spend-ing are well-known. One frequent assertion isthat high levels of spending alienate and dis-illusion the public. Does an individual’sdirect experience with campaign spendingaffect his or her attitudes? Do large amountsof spending in their own districts turn off and disillusion potential voters? Campaignspending does not have the dire conse-quences for trust, efficacy, and involvementthat were alleged by critics of campaignspending.In a study of the 1994 and 1996 U.S.House elections, my coauthor and I exam-ined whether the level of spending in thecampaigns affected the public’s trust in gov-ernment and the electoral process.
3
In otherwords, are citizens living in congressional dis-tricts where campaign spending is high likelyto be more cynical about politics and elec-tions than citizens living in districts wherespending is low? Merging the best availablenational election public opinion data (theNational Election Studies, collected by theInteruniversity Consortium for Political andSocial Research at the University of Michigan) with campaign spending data col-lected by the Federal Election Commission,
2
Campaign spend-ing makes animportant contri-bution to keyaspects of democratic life,such as publicknowledge, anddoes not damagepublic trust orinvolvement.
 
we performed a statistical analysis to deter-mine whether campaign spending was linkedto the level of public trust. The study con-trolled for more than a dozen other factorsthat might influence public trust; that way,we could be certain that we were isolating theeffects of campaign spending from theeffects of other possible factors.The results indicated that campaignspending does not contribute to public cyni-cism. When respondents were asked howoften they trusted the federal government todo what is right, their answers were unaffect-ed by the level of candidate spending. Thesame result held when survey respondentswere asked whether people like themselveshad a say in what government does. Whethercampaign spending was high or low, peoplewere equally likely to indicate that they didhave a say in what government does. Directexperience of high levels of spending doesnot increase citizens’ cynicism about govern-ment and politics.On only one question did respondents dis-play more cynicism when spending was high:when challengers spent a lot in 1994, surveyrespondents were more likely to say that thegovernment wasted a lot of tax money. Whenincumbents spent more in 1994, however,respondents were more likely to give a trustingresponse, to say that government did notwaste a lot of tax dollars. Those results are notsurprising given the context of the 1994 elec-tions. Republican challengers waged a particu-larly vigorous campaign stressing commonthemes across the country, and as they spentmore, that effort bore some fruit in the publicperception of taxes. Incumbents, mostlyDemocrats, were able to counteract that byspending more themselves.We also found two instances in whichmore spending boosted trust. Increasedincumbent spending in 1996 boosted publicperceptions that government is run for thebenefit of all rather than for big interests, andhigher challenger spending in 1996 made itless likely that people believed that manypeople in the government are corrupt. Thosetwo findings, neither of which held in 1994,are less important than the general pattern of the results: despite the assertions of critics of campaign finance, higher campaign spend-ing does not generate distrust and cynicism.Another charge related to the trust issue isthat higher campaign spending tends to dis-courage citizen involvement in and attentionto campaigns. For public involvement, weexamined whether respondents in 1994 and1996 said they cared about the election, dis-cussed politics with friends and family,talked to others about voting for or against aspecific candidate, and were interested in fol-lowing the campaign. In only 2 instances (of a possible 10) did we find that spendingdiminished involvement, but, contrary toarguments made by critics of spending, it washigher challenger spending in 1994, notincumbent spending, that decreased the like-lihood of caring about the election or dis-cussing politics with friends and family.
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Again, the pattern of results is more impor-tant than the results in those two specificinstances: in general, there is no statisticallysignificant relationship between campaignspending and public involvement or atten-tion. The criticism that large amounts of campaign spending dismay the public anddiscourage people from being interested incampaigns is incorrect.Notably, the amount of incumbentspending had no significant effect on thepublic’s involvement or attention levels. Theargument that citizens are turned off byhigh-spending campaigns simply does nothold up when those high-spending cam-paigns are in citizens’ own districts. Scholarshave found this kind of result in many are-nas: people are critical of Congress, but theytend to praise their own members of Congress; people say the nation’s educationsystem is in crisis, but they generally ratetheir local schools highly; people say crime isspiraling out of control, but they say they feelrelatively safe in their neighborhoods.Campaign spending apparently works muchthe same way: citizens may, almost by reflex,respond negatively when asked about cam-paign spending in the United States general-
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Direct experienceof high levels of spending doesnot increase citi-zens’ cynicismabout govern-ment and politics.
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