Does Money Buy Elections?
20 Jun 2017 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, politics - USA, Public Choice Tags: campaign finance reform
Will the Republican presidential primaries be over before anyone votes?
16 Oct 2015 Leave a comment
in politics - USA, Public Choice Tags: 2016 presidential elections, campaign finance, campaign finance reform
One-time front runner Scott Walker pulled out with large debts. Given that the debates start so much sooner than before, some people will exhaust their donor base and will be forced out by the prospect of excessive debt before anyone votes.
Scott Walker dropped out with his campaign owing $1.6 million nyti.ms/1G8iBSZ via @maggienyt http://t.co/vrTng6XCGC—
NYT Politics (@nytpolitics) October 15, 2015
There are only a few serious candidates in the Republican race anyway. Ben Carson and Donald Trump are silly season candidates but have raised a lot of money.
Trump and Carson will lose support sooner or later. Carly Farina, Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio in the main serious contenders of the rest. My tip is Farina and Rubio will win in the end but I am not sure which one of those two will be the vice presidential nominee. I suspect Rubio.
Here's @pollsterpolls avg since 6/1, w/ less smoothing. 2-pt drop for Trump. Not yet clear whether there's a trend. http://t.co/vrwXNC6hlo—
The Monkey Cage (@monkeycageblog) September 24, 2015
Key pt: Trump's share of coverage matters more than its tone (cc @mattyglesias @jackshafer) washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-c… http://t.co/zl8iu2Q21x—
The Monkey Cage (@monkeycageblog) September 29, 2015
Fascinating that GOP activists see no trade-off between conservatism and electability: washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-c… http://t.co/uXHHHnFKWp—
The Monkey Cage (@monkeycageblog) October 13, 2015
Here's a new graph of Trump's poll numbers and share of news coverage. For more see: washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-c… http://t.co/sdJCQCs5O5—
The Monkey Cage (@monkeycageblog) August 28, 2015
Massive correlation b/t news coverage of GOP candidates & poll #s. Is it causation? See: washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-c… http://t.co/sCCvma2uYR—
The Monkey Cage (@monkeycageblog) August 28, 2015
Ben Carson's decline and then surge in the polls tracks media attention. washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-c… http://t.co/mrddJMMAc0—
The Monkey Cage (@monkeycageblog) September 03, 2015
Here's some actual evidence on whether voter anger is helping "outsider" candidates. washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-c… http://t.co/RaragjjStV—
The Monkey Cage (@monkeycageblog) September 16, 2015
Candidate Lessig’s Bad Example
11 Oct 2015 Leave a comment
in comparative institutional analysis, constitutional political economy, economic history, politics - USA, Public Choice, rentseeking Tags: campaign finance reform, campaign finance regulation
A key reason why self-funded candidates often falter
26 Jul 2015 Leave a comment
in constitutional political economy, economics of bureaucracy, politics - USA, Public Choice, rentseeking Tags: 2016 presidential election, campaign finance reform, campaign finance regulation, congressional elections
via Sometimes, Money Can’t Buy You Votes | FiveThirtyEight and Four Ways To Fund A Presidential Campaign | FiveThirtyEight.
Presidential campaign spending is overwhelmingly on TV ads in swing states
21 Jul 2015 Leave a comment
in politics - USA, Public Choice Tags: 2016 presidential election, campaign finance reform, campaign finance regulation, political advertising, swing states
Presidential campaign spending is overwhelmingly on TV ads in swing states. vox.com/2014/7/30/5949… http://t.co/szyXQZjnxG—
Vox Maps (@VoxMaps) June 16, 2015
Political donors back winners just before they start winning
01 Jul 2015 Leave a comment
in constitutional political economy, economics of bureaucracy, politics - USA, Public Choice, rentseeking Tags: campaign finance reform, campaign finance regulation, political lobbyists, pressure groups, voter demographics
Several major industries have shifted their political donations to Republicans from Democrats: nytimes.com/interactive/20… http://t.co/qYgOdbeZAp—
NYT Graphics (@nytgraphics) June 29, 2015
How much does it cost to run for Congress in the Philippines?
01 Mar 2015 Leave a comment
in development economics, law and economics Tags: bribery and corruption, campaign finance reform, Philippines, political campaign
A candidate for Congress or for mayor in the Philippines has to spend around P73, 060, 000 (US$1,537,781).
The Congressmen in the Philippines must meet a huge payroll:
- As many as 6,000 ward leaders are maintained. They are the backbone of election campaign in the barangays (villages) where they live. They receive at least P2, 000 per month for three months prior to the election.
- In between elections, ward leaders of incumbents are hired as casuals or holds office in the city’s bureaucracy. Casuals have jobs for a minimum of three months a year. Then there are 15-30 ghost employees hired by the city or municipality.
- On election day, a candidate needs watchers for each of 3,000 precincts. At a minimum of P500 ($10.52) per watcher, the total cost is P3 million (63, 144) plus meals.
- Transportation costs amounts to at least P3 million ($63, 144).
- Costs of the campaign materials and many carnival style election rallies are conservatively pegged at P5 million ($105, 241).
My source then asks:
On this minimum conservative figure, why is a candidate willing to spend this amount in an election when the accumulated salaries of a mayor for a three-year term amounts to P 2 million ($42, 096) and P3 million ($63, 144) for a representative of the Lower House?
A successful Philippine presidential candidate expects to spend 3 billion pesos; a candidate for the Senate must spend at least ½ billion pesos. Senate candidates are elected on a single national ballot, so they must have a national payroll and a larger payroll in the provinces where they are strong.
Philippine politics is basically divided up into Communist and non-Communist political parties with a shifting kaleidoscope of alliances both between and within parties. Most alliances breakup and realign when a presidential election is looming, depending on who looks like being the winning side.
These costs of running for Congress do not include maintaining private armies, which some Philippine politicians do, especially in the south and in the poorer provinces. These private armies, at least 85 private armies of politicians have been identified, are for personal protection as well is intimidation of rival candidates. Many of these private armies are made up of moonlighting police officers.
I was in the Philippines for the election when Estrada was elected president. There were 40 murders in that election by the time I left. That is the average number for a Philippine national election. Most of the murders are associated with candidates for local or provincial elections.
Politics is very retail the Philippines, which is common through Asia. I once attended a public meeting with the visiting Vice-President of the Philippines in New Zealand. Every question but one was about how she could help members of the audience in some way at the personal level. The only political question was on abortion.
The two politicians who accompanied her sang or did a comedy routine rather than answer questions or make some sort of pitch to the audience on policy. One of these politicians who accompanied Vice-President Arroyo was an actress who was later elected to the Senate.
How public funding of elections makes politics even more polarized
14 Feb 2015 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, law and economics, Public Choice Tags: campaign finance reform
Can millionaires buy their way into Parliament? Lessons from the recent New Zealand election
07 Oct 2014 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, election campaigns, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA, Public Choice Tags: 2014 New Zealand general election, campaign finance reform, Leftover Left, median voter theorm, public choice
Two millionaires, one on the left and one on the right, set up parties to get into Parliament in the recent New Zealand election. The millionaire of the left failed abysmally. The millionaire on the right made progress towards getting into Parliament in the 2017 election.
Each spent vast sums of money by New Zealand standards on their party:
- Kim.com gave $4.5 million to his Internet – Mana party; and
- Colin Craig gave about $1.5 million to his Conservative party with another millionaire giving $750,000 to the Conservative party.
By way of context, the maximum that a political party can spend on campaign expenses in the three months prior to the election is $1.1 million, plus $25,000 per electorate seat It is contesting. None of this is spent on radio and television advertising because this is allocated for free by the electoral commission based on previous election performance.
One of the major rationales for election finance regulation is to stop the rich buying elections by flooding the airways and billboards with their call to arms and buying politicians short of campaign donations:
Conventional wisdom holds that money plays a central and nefarious role in American politics.
Underlying this belief are two fundamental assumptions:
(1) elective offices are effectively sold to the highest bidder, and
(2) campaign contributions are the functional equivalent of bribes.
Campaign finance regulations are thus an attempt to hinder the operation of this political marketplace.
John Milyo
New Zealand is a good example of how difficult it is to buy votes if you’re underlying message does not work. This is a key point to remember.
The millionaire of the left, Kim.com, gave money to a far left party in New Zealand, recycled a couple of middle-aged lefties, ran a hard left campaign, and won all of 2000 extra party votes over last time out of electorate of about 2 million.
He came unstuck because his sitting electorate MP lost 3000 votes and lost his seat. If he had kept his seat, his party would have been also entitled to a List MP seat because his party won 1.3% of the party vote. Under the New Zealand system of mixed member proportional representation, if you win a seat in Parliament, you’re entitled to list seats to ensure that your representation in Parliament is equal to your party vote.
The millionaire of the right, Colin Craig, ran a socially conservative, economic nationalist campaign and won 4% of the vote. A party needs 5% of the party vote to get into Parliament if your party does not win an electorate seat.
Both of these parties that did not get into Parliament outspent the winning national party which won 60 of the 121 seats in Parliament.
The failure of Kim.com and Colin Craig to buy their way Parliament should be no surprise. Most systematic studies find no effect of marginal campaign spending on the electoral success of candidates.
For example, see Steven Levitt, “Using Repeat Challengers to Estimate the Effects of Campaign Spending on Electoral Outcomes in the U.S. House,” Journal of Political Economy 102 (1994): 777–798.
Levitt noted that previous studies of congressional spending have found a large positive effect of challenger spending, but little evidence for effects of incumbent spending. Those studies did not adequately control for inherent differences in vote-getting ability across candidates.
- His paper examined elections in which the same two candidates face one another on more than one occasion; differencing eliminates the influence of any fixed candidate or district attributes.
- His estimates of the effects of challenger spending are an order of magnitude below those of previous studies. Campaign spending has an extremely small impact on election outcomes, regardless of who does the spending.
Jeff Milyo also found that a more systematic analysis of the electoral fortunes of wealthy candidates found no significant association between electoral or fund-raising success and personal wealth. For example, see Jeffrey Milyo and Timothy Groseclose, “The Electoral Effects of Incumbent Wealth,” Journal of Law and Economics 42 (1999): 699–722.
A range of rich candidates have attempted to buy Senate seats and gubernatorial posts with little success if they were themselves unappealing candidates.
The best explanation to date for the minor effect of campaign spending on electoral success is competent candidates are adept at both convincing contributors to give money and convincing voters to give their vote.
The finding that campaign spending and electoral success are highly correlated exaggerates the importance of money to a candidate’s chances of winning.
Campaign donors give more money to the expected winners because they want to be on the winning side. What lobbyist doesn’t want to be that the best new friend of the incoming minister?
Legislators tend to act in accordance with the interests of donors, but this is not because of a quid pro quo. Instead, donors tend to give to like-minded candidates. See Steven Levitt, “Who are PACs Trying to Influence with Contributions: Politicians or Voters?” Economics and Politics 10, no. 1 (1998): 19–36.
It is a much surer thing to give donations to a party that already agrees with you, rather than persuade someone to change their minds with campaign donations. That is a much less certain bet.
Studies of legislative behaviour indicate that the most important determinants of an incumbent’s voting record are constituent interests, party, and personal ideology. These three factors explain nearly all of the variation in incumbents’ voting records. See Steven Levitt, “How Do Senators Vote? Disentangling the Role of Party Affiliation, Voter Preferences and Senator Ideology,” American Economic Review 86 (1996): 425–441.
As an aside, the hard left campaign was instructive in another regard. The hard left honestly believes that there is a large number of people out willing to vote hard left if only their message was properly funded and got a hearing. These would be hard left voters are currently parking their vote elsewhere, such as with the right wing parties, apparently.
A massively funded hard left campaign in New Zealand won 1.2% of the party vote. In the 2011 election, the same hard left party, when woefully underfunded, won 1.1% of the party vote. Getting the message out appears to have absolutely no effect on the party vote of the hard left. The median voter theory rules.
The Conservative party was much more successful because the Christian parties in New Zealand usually get about 4% of the vote, except when they’re fighting with each other over who was following the Word of God better, which is rather common.
Furthermore, about 10-15% of the New Zealand election is both socially conservative and economically nationalist. They used to be called working-class Tories. Much of this vote currently votes for the New Zealand First Party– a one-man party – and its leader will be 72 at the next election.
HT: Jeff Milyo
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