Campaign Spending

MONEY PLAYS AN important role in electoral politics; keeping a campaign well funded is essential to electoral success. A knowledgeable campaign staff, television advertisements, travel to give speeches, mailings, and phone calls cost a large amount of money. Many who are critical of the role money plays stipulate that those who have money to contribute, such as wealthy interest groups, have an unfair advantage in that they can essentially buy access to elected officials, thereby subverting the democratic process. Even officials not beholden to special interests need to find sources of funding, leading many to call for changes to the fundraising process. Even with reforms such as the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (McCain-Feingold Act), money has continues to be the key to successful campaigns.

Spending tends not to be an issue in presidential or other executive elections. These offices are held in such high importance and esteem that major party candidates do not typically have problems finding sources of funding. What is remarkable about campaign spending, especially in presidential elections, is the sheer amount of money that is spent. The amount of money spent by presidential candidates has increased from $67 million in 1976, to $718 million for the 2004 election—double what spent was in 2000. Even conservative estimates posit that candidates in the 2008 presidential election will spend over $1 billion. In presidential campaigns most money is raised during the primary election season. Spending, however, occurs throughout campaigns, with candidates using a great deal of resources early to secure their party's nomination and later to win the general election.

In congressional or local legislative elections, money is even more important because of the imbalance that exists between candidates. Of the many advantages incumbents have, fundraising is paramount, often stemming from other sources of incumbency advantage. In the 2004 election, the average successful candidate for the House of Representatives spent over $1 million. The average senator spent over $7 million. What may be more important than the amount of spending itself in congressional elections, is when spending occurs. Incumbents that are able to spend early in a campaign are more likely to deter challengers, and can more easily prevent eventual challengers from raising campaign money. Early advertising and campaigning can effectively deflate the challenger's campaign before it has had a chance to get off the ground.

This effect of campaign spending may mask the importance of fundraising, because incumbents can spend a little more up front and then much less later in the campaign season. Looking at the end of the campaign, the snapshot on Election Day, the incumbent may have spent less than average, but still will have won a safe victory. The difference is that the challenger will not have been able to match spending due to cash flow problems early in the election season. This highlights the importance of examining not only the dollar amounts, but also the dynamics of fundraising.

One school of thought is that the spending of both incumbent and challenger is important. Simply, the more the challenger spends, the better he or she will do. Likewise, the more the incumbent spends, the better he or she will do. A challenge to this idea holds that it is in fact challenger spending that determines the outcomes of elections. The basic idea is that there is a threshold of how much it takes to win an office. The challenger cannot hope to unseat the incumbent without raising more than this threshold.

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