Posts Tagged ‘campaign finance’
Author: mark Published: November 5th, 2010
The Times’ Caucus blog has now returned to the subject of spending by independent organizations and the effect on the midterm election results. The post however leaves a great deal to be desired.
After all the talk about the impact of independent groups on this year’s midterm elections, the debate over at least one important question can now begin in earnest: Which groups were the most effective?
It is surely a question that donors who contributed giant sums will want to know, although an organization’s impact is not measured solely in wins and losses.
Nevertheless, a New York Times analysis of Federal Election Commission records found the American Future Fund, an Iowa-based nonprofit that reported spending just over $8 million on 25 House and Senate races, won in 76 percent of them, giving it the highest winning percentage among the biggest-spending Republican-leaning groups.
American Action Network, another nonprofit group that has been active this year, ended up with Republican victories in about 56 percent of the contests it invested in.
American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS, the two groups tied to Karl Rove, won just over 58 percent of their races combined; the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s winning percentage when backing Republican candidates was just a few percentage points higher.
Another active Republican-leaning group, Americans for Job Security, saw Republicans it backed win in about two-thirds of its races.
Meanwhile, major Democratic-leaning groups, predictably, fared worse. America’s Families First Action Fund, a group financed mostly by wealthy liberal donors that was active in House races, won only about 18 percent of its contests; the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees did only slightly better, winning about 20 percent of its races.
Faring the best among the top-spending Democratic groups were the National Education Association, the teacher’s union, which won about 25 percent of its races, and the Service Employees International Union, which won about 29 percent of its contests.
The problem is that this assumes spending has an effect. Comparing what organizations won what percentage of the races they invested in might be good fun (I mean some people might find it is fun just to know that Karl Rove can’t always get what he wants!), but it does not actually answer the question of whether third-party spending is effective or not. Even the fact that there was variation in the percentage of races won by different organizations does not tell us anything useful for answering that puzzle.
Some might be quick to assume that the fact that there was variation between organizations means third-party spending does not matter. Yet, even that ignores critical questions like, would things have gone even worse in those races where organizations unsuccessfully spent for their preferred candidate? Or did the level of investment in those races not meet some essential threshold? Or were the organizations with less success outspent by competing organizations in the same race? Most importantly, would all these races have had the exact same result (or a close approximation) without a single dollar being spent? If not, how big is the difference?
Answering the question of whether third party spending effects (positively or negatively) election outcomes — whether it is possible to buy or heavily influence election outcomes — requires a much finer grade of analysis and more robust methods and measurement. And frankly it is probably not possible to come to a definitive answer.
So those that invested might like the outcomes of the races they spent money on. But that is fundamentally different than bang for one’s buck. The later implies that spending actually has an effect. This Caucus post just leaves us in the dark.
Tags: campaign finance, Congressional elections 2010, damn you Karl Rove, evidence-based policy has its own problems but the sign is funny, midterms, third-party spending
Category politics, U.S. politics |
Author: adriejan Published: October 28th, 2010
Due to the quirks of the American campaign finance system (really incomprehensible unless you are an expert on election funding), a maze of organizations, committees, shell organizations etc. has developed over the years to fund campaigns for both parties. With every legislative or judicial modification to the system, finance money – mostly used for advertising – like water always manages to finds its way into the right pockets.
Our reader Bart writes:
National Public Radio (NPR) drew a map to show the links between some “independent” political action groups and the Republican party, including such organizations as Swift Boat Veterans, American Crossroads and Americans for Job Security.
See also this brilliant article in The New Yorker a couple of weeks ago, on the political activism of the ultra conservative billionaire Koch brothers, who fund organizations like Americans for Prosperity, another empty shell Washington-insider campaign organization that parades itself as a grass-roots organization of American citizens.
Click to enlarge:
I wonder what this map on the Democratic side looks like.
Tags: campaign finance, Congressional elections 2010, electioneering, political advertisements, Republican Party
Category U.S. politics |
Author: mark Published: October 12th, 2010
I have posted earlier about the importance of recent changes to third-party campaign spending regulations in the States, and how large corporations and wealthy individuals can use their resources to influences campaigns unduly. The earlier post examined spending to-date and noted that Republican supporters were spending in more races for both the House and the Senate and largely spending more in the races they were investing in. (And it is an investment).
The NY Times picks up on further bad news for the Democrats:
George Soros, the billionaire financier who was an energetic Democratic donor in the last several election cycles but is sitting this one out, is not feeling optimistic about Democratic prospects.
“I made an exception getting involved in 2004,” Mr. Soros, 80, said in a brief interview Friday at a forum sponsored by the Bretton Woods Committee, which promotes understanding of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.
“And since I didn’t succeed in 2004, I remained engaged in 2006 and 2008. But I’m basically not a party man. I’d just been forced into that situation by what I considered the excesses of the Bush administration.”
Beyond the loss of spending the Democrats can’t be thrilled with Soros’ analysis of their prospects in November’s mid-term elections:
Asked if the prospect of Republican control of one or both houses of Congress concerned him, he said: “It does, because I think they are pushing the wrong policies, but I’m not in a position to stop it. I don’t believe in standing in the way of an avalanche.”
Tags: 2010 mid-term elections, campaign finance, Democratic Party, George Soros, Obama, third-party spending
Category politics, U.S. politics |
Author: mark Published: September 25th, 2010
As the mid-term elections continue to heat up, the NY Times’ Caucus Blog reports on third-party spending in the election so far. This, of course, is the first election since the US Supreme Court’s split 5-to-4 decision afforded corporations the same rights as people when it came to contributing to political campaigns. The Times reports that since the January 2010 change:
third-party groups have spent $26 million on the most competitive House and Senate races across the country, a majority of them supporting Republican candidates.
The Times reporting is pretty basic offering no sense of where the money is coming from or the particulars of how third-party dollars are being spent. Nonetheless their fancy maps do show the distribution and concentration of third-party spending across states for both the House and Senate races:
It will be interesting to watch how this evolves over the rest of the campaign and whether there are any major shifts.
Tags: 2010 mid-term elections, campaign finance, third-party spending
Category U.S. politics |
