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Political Behavior

, Volume 35, Issue 1, pp 21–41 | Cite as

Does Money Buy Votes? The Case of Self-Financed Gubernatorial Candidates, 1998–2008

  • Adam R. BrownEmail author
Original Paper
First Online:

Abstract

Because campaign spending correlates strongly with election results, observers of American politics frequently lament that money seems to buy votes. However, the apparent effect of spending on votes is severely inflated by omitted variable bias: The best candidates also happen to be the best fundraisers. Acting strategically, campaign donors direct their funds toward the “best” candidates, who would be more likely to win even in a moneyless world. These donor behaviors spuriously amplify the correlation between spending and votes. As evidence for this argument, I show that (non-strategic) self-financed spending has no statistical effect on election results, whereas (strategic) externally-financed spending does.

Keywords

Campaign effects Campaign spending Gubernatorial elections 
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Notes

Acknowledgments

For helpful comments, I thank Margaret Ferguson, Quin Monson, Kelly Patterson, Brandice Canes-Wrone, participants at the 2009 Conference on State Politics and Policy, participants at the 2009 annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, and participants in the Brigham Young University political science “Thursday Group.” Katrina Smith Cammack provided expert research assistance. Faults remain my own.

Supplementary material

11109_2012_9193_MOESM1_ESM.docx (53 kb)
Supplementary material 1 (DOCX 54 kb)

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© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2012

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Brigham Young UniversityProvoUSA

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