The impact of money on elections: evidence from open seat races in the United States House of Representatives, 1990-2004

Christopher Duquette (), Steven B Caudill () and Franklin Mixon ()
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Christopher Duquette: Center for Naval Analyses
Franklin Mixon: Auburn University

Economics Bulletin, 2008, vol. 4, issue 2, pages 1-12

Abstract: A binary win/loss model is constructed and estimated on the results from 1990-2004 contests for open U.S. House seats. The results indicate that election outcomes are highly sensitive to the major-party candidates’ campaign spending ratios, and increases in spending ratios are shown to translate into non-trivial increases the candidate’s probability of winning, a result that holds for both Republicans and Democrats. The payoff to high levels of spending explains why it’s so attractive for candidates to outspend their opponents by large margins.

Keywords: public choice; campaign spending; federal elections; logit (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D7 H3 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008-02-12
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