NUMBER PB08-1JANUARY 2008

The Impact of Spending on U.S.Congressional Campaigns

Daniel Weeks

is Policy Director of Americans for Campaign Reform and a Marshall Scholar in Political Theory at Oxford. He received his BA in Political Science from Yale in 2006, with a concentration in American elections.

For many Americans, money is one of the mosttroubling aspects in modern election campaigns.The reasons voters give are simple: money is seenas a barrier to seeking and winning public office;as a means of undue private influence by specialinterest groups; and as a distraction to politiciansfrom doing the job for which they were elected.Conventional wisdom holds that money buyselections, if not the candidates themselves, andthat politics in Washington are tainted as a result.Money matters, to be sure, as thefollowing data show. Since 1992, spending oncongressional elections has more than doubled to$1.3 billion, with winning House candidatesspending an average of $1.4 million in 2006

.Nine times out of ten, the higher-spendingcandidate won. The rise in campaign spendinghas been accompanied by a decline in electoralcompetition, as measured by near-perfect rates ofincumbent reelection since 1998 and a steady risein the number of uncontested races and share ofincumbent vote. And tales of millionairecandidates flooding the airwaves with negativeattacks, to the tune of $5 million or more, onlystrengthen the underlying assumption that bigmoney is a determining factor in modernelection campaigns.But the true picture of campaignspending and its implications for electoralsuccess is more nuancedthan the vote-buying hypo-thesis suggests. Simply put,campaign dollars are notcreated equal. The force ofthe first dollar spent interms of its vote-gettingeffect for the candidate isconsiderably greater thanthat of the millionth. Half amillion dollars in challenger spending goesfurther in netting actual votes than as manyincumbent dollars in a typical congressionalcampaign. And once a million has been spent, inall but the costliest of districts, additionalspending by incumbents and challengers alikemeans almost nothing at all.

5 Bicentennial Square Concord, NH 03301 Tel 603.227.0626 info@just6dollars.org www.just6dollars.org

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Methodology

This paper analyzes the marginal effective-ness of campaign spending for incumbent, challenger, andopen seat congressional candidates between 1992 and 2006.Panel data for U.S. House of Representatives generalelections only are considered, as primary spending figures andvote returns are not available across the time period observed.The reliance on data from House races is appropriate giventhe large sample size and relative inter-comparability of Housedistricts in contrast with U.S. Senate seats and the Presidency.Of the 3,480 races and nearly 7,000 general election candi-dates running for House between 1992 and 2006, only uncon-tested candidates and those spending $5,000 or less areexcluded from the data. Controls for candidate quality, districtpartisanship, and national political trends are incorporated insome of the analyses below. All spending figures are adjustedfor inflation and represented in 2006 dollars.

Acknowledgment

I am grateful to Prof. Gary Jacobson forproviding the congressional campaign spending source dataused in the analysis and for general guidance.

Nearly 9 in 10 citizens believe that good people are discouraged from seeking ofﬁce because of the high cost of campaigns.

Does Money Buy Elections?

Americans forCampaign Reform

Policy Paper

As the following analysis shows, there is areasonable level of spending on federalcampaigns beyond which money has little or nodetermining effect. So long as otherwise qualifiedcandidates obtain sufficient resources for thevoters to learn who they are, additional spendingby themselves or their opponents does notmeasurably impact the chances of their success

.As for those candidates who lack access tosufficient funding for the voters to learn who theyare, they are all but guaranteed to fail. The twofindings have important implications for thecampaign spending decisions of currentcandidates for federal office and for the viabilityof various proposed methods of campaignfinance reform.

I. GET KNOWN OR GO HOME

The Need for Sufﬁcient Campaign Spending

Candidates require an “adequate” spendingthreshold in order to compete for public office.Adequate spending is defined as the level atwhich voters receive sufficient information aboutthe candidate to make an informed choice.Spending thresholds vary for incumbent andnon-incumbent candidates and in accordancewith the communication costs of the district.For the typical non-incumbent candidate,pursuing a combination of retail grassrootscampaigning and wholesale mass mediacommunication is the only viable means ofobtaining the level of name recognition that isrequired for voters to take note. The availability of sufficient funds means that a candidate canhire a campaign staff, lease and outfit aheadquarters, produce literature and a website,travel across the district seeking votes, andcommunicate en masse via paid mail and printand broadcast media. Each of these activites helpsto raise the candidate’s profile in the minds ofvoters and thereby provide a credible alternativeto the incumbent. But few non-incumbentcandidates ever reach the competitive threshold.Incumbents, by contrast, enjoy a range ofinstitutional advantages inherent in theirposition, including free media, taxpayer-fundedtravel, and the ability to deliver constituentservices and special appropriations to theirdistrict. The availability of such resources meansthat incumbents require relatively less campaignspending than non-incumbents to mount acredible campaign, even as their demonstratedability to raise funds far exceeds that of theaverage challenger. Challengers wishing toovercome the incumbency advantage without

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Figure 1: Average cost of unseating a Houseincumbent [1992-2006]

Note: 2000 average includes period outlier: $5 million campaign

Figure 2: Frequency and cost of unseating Houseincumbents, rate of incumbent reelect. [1992-2006]

Year Successful Challengers

Winning Challenger Spending (avg)

Incumbent Reelection

199219$638,23195%199434$901,76192%199620$1,359,12795%19986$1,424,73499%20006$2,316,82999%20024$1,756,06899%20045$1,793,75299%200623$1,833,33494%

20062004200220001998199619941992 $0$500,000$1,000,000$1,500,000$2,000,000

the assistance of a famous name or high publicoffice of their own are therefore required to raisesignificant financial resources to compete.Analysis of campaign spending on thepart of challenger and open seat candidatesunderscores the need for sufficient spendingthresholds to credibly compete—and theinfrequency with which such funding levels areobtained. Of the more than 5,000 general electionchallengers seeking election tothe House of Representativesbetween 1972 and 2006, only onecandidate with spending of lessthan $100,000 was elected, in1974

. Approximately half of allchallengers fell into thislowest-spending category, andtheir prospects have onlydiminished with time

.Since 1992, only three challengersspending $300,000 or less have successfullyunseated an incumbent. Two of them ran in theswing election of 1994and the third in the swingelection of 2006

. Of the sixteen successfulchallengers with spending of $500,000 or less,only two ran after 1994; setting those two aside,there is not a single congressional challenger whohas unseated an incumbent since 1994 with lessthan three quarters of a million dollars inspending. Taken together, the average spendingby winning challengers for the period 1992-2006was $1.3 million, with a steady increase overtime: the average $1 million required to unseat anincumbent in the 1990s rose to $1.9 million from2000-2006. By contrast, $100,000 was sufficient tounseat an incumbent in 1974 and $519,000 adecade later in 1984

.That incumbents are all but guaranteed towin reelection is due, in no small part, to thepaucity of adequately funded challengers in agiven election. As Figure 4 shows, the vast

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Not since 1974 has a challenger with less than $100,000 in spending been elected to Congress.

Case in Point

The Corzine Conundrum

In 1999, JonCorzine enteredthe race for U.S.Senate from NewJersey, vowing to“spend what ittakes” to succeed.A political new-comer who had lefthis mark on WallStreet as head ofGoldman Sachs, Corzine washardly the ﬁrst millionaire can-didate to enter the world of politics, but the scale ofhis effort was unprecedented. Investing $62 millionof his own money in a highly professionalized,television-driven campaign, Corzine defeated hisRepublican opponent in the open general electionwhile earning for himself the dubious reputation ofhaving “bought” his Senate seat.Staggering though the Corzine sum may be, thevote-buying hypothesis is cast into question whenconsidered in light of the vote. For all his record-breaking spending, the Democrat Corzine inDemocratic-leaning New Jersey defeated his Re-publican opponent Bob Franks with barely 50 per-cent of the vote—a virtual tie. CongressmanFranks, for his part, put up the closest score of anyNew Jersey Republican running for U.S. Senatesince 1972, despite being outspent by $48 millionor a factor of ﬁve to one. Indeed, political consult-ants familiar with the New Jersey terrain havequestioned whether Franks

s $12 million in fundingfor a contested primary and generalelection wassufﬁcient to mount a fully credible campaign whenthe cost of advertising in New York City and Phila-delphia is considered. Regardless, the evidencewould hardly suggest that money equaled voteswhere Corzine

s colossal spendingwas concerned.As Jennifer Steen of Boston College observes,Corzine is but one in a long line of multi-million-dollar self-ﬁnanciers for whom big spending doesnot often translate into big votes

; his narrow vic-tory made him an exception to the rule. Accordingto the evidence, a more ﬁtting conclusion from theNew Jersey race would be that Corzine gave thegreatest gift in Senate campaign history to thebroadcasters of New York and Philadelphia, and tohis consultants: tens of millions in arguably unnec-essary spending on an open seat long held by hisown party. Big spending bought credibility and theopportunity to become known, but it could hardlyguarantee the success of Corzine

s campaign.