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The Impact of Campaign Spending on Votes in Multiparty Elections

Marie Rekkas

Simon Fraser University

The Review of Economics and Statistics 2007

The impact of candidate campaign spending on votes and abstention in multiparty elections is estimated from the specification of a structural model of voter behavior. This model accounts for the endogeneity of campaign spending as well as the heterogeneity in voter preferences. Empirical results are estimated from aggregate (actual) election data. The results demonstrate the importance of spending during the campaign period and voter heterogeneity with respect to these expenditures. The own- and cross-expenditure vote share elasticity estimates reveal that political campaign spending not only redistributes voters across parties but also decreases the size of the abstaining group of the electorate.

DOI
10.1162/rest.89.3.573
Volume
89 (3)
Pages
573-585
Language
en
Export
BibTeX
Sources
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