Money attracted to quality in Shreveport mayor race

A canard about elections frequently circulated, often by those who should know better is “the more money spent, the more chance you have of being elected.” Not only does this phrasing not demonstrate as direct of a correlation as one may think, it also fundamentally misunderstands the role of money in elections.

Upon receiving this statement, one might be forgiven for making the next logical inference, which would be something like “money buys victory.” It does not, and let’s start with an empirical demonstration why not. Just to use one example, in 2004 in U.S. Senate elections, of the 34 of them, only 75 percent of the top 20 spenders won election. Further, in 4 of the 34, the lower spender won. Finally, 18 of the races weren’t competitive – the winner got better than 60 percent of the vote. In the competitive 16 contests was where the four lower spenders won. (The only defeated incumbent outspent his rival 3:2.)

This example, which is typical, points out several things which help us understand the relationship between spending and electoral performance. First of all, given the composition of the jurisdiction and perceptions of the candidate (usually an incumbent), in the majority of cases no amount of spending is going to make a difference, in that one candidate will clearly win regardless. (Perhaps the best example ever being the $64 million Democrat Tony Sanchez spent in 2002, $40 million more than his Republican incumbent opponent, to lose by 18 percent in a bid for the Texas governorship.)

Second, money is a relative thing: for example, in 2004 Sen. Arlen Specter raised the most money and won a close election while former Sen. Tom Daschle was close behind in spending yet lost his close election – even though Specter outspent his opponent by $17 million and Daschle outspent his by $7 million. (There were plenty out there who won by far bigger margins who didn’t spend much more than their opponents, or who spent among the lowest amounts of all the winners – the average competitive winner spent almost $13 million while the average noncompetitive winner spent under $6 million.)

Third, focusing on absolute spending misses the entire relevance of money in elections, because it rests on the untenable (and, as demonstrated above, empirically unsupported notion) that money creates quality in the minds of the electorate. In fact, that is the reverse of reality: it is candidate quality that attracts money. What money gets raised is the key, not what gets spent, and more gets spent (and thus raised) the more opponents spend (because they are able to raise it). In short, spending is wholly dependent upon the number of quality candidates in a contest; more than one elevates spending because more money is raised as each tries to fend off a quality opponent.

People (usually) are not irrational when comes to investments, which is what a donation to a political candidate is. The put their money down, so to speak, because they believe the candidate has quality and, therefore, has a chance to win. Unless you have unshakeable ideological convictions and are acting purely on principle, you don’t want to put your money where you know it will be wasted in defeat. Candidates who are perceived as higher quality are able to raise more because people (who for whatever reasons want them elected) see them as decent bets to win, and need to raise more if they face a similar quality opponent. That is, they raise more because they need to, and because they can.

Former city attorney Jerry Jones, the leading money-raiser in the race, well may win the mayor’s race and spend the most doing so. But that will only be a reflection of the quality of a candidate he is – both in terms of getting donations and votes – not because he “bought” any victory that may be his.