The Affect of Congressional Campaign Spending

This is an attempt to add what data collected for political science has to add to the argument of what affect money has on winning the campaign.

There is a very simple strategy that could raise millions and have such a drastic impact on the election this year, and it only requires

600,000 people and $120...

For months now I have been calling for someone, somewhere to organize a fund raising drive that would reshape the elections this year and impact the Republican money machine in such an adverse way that they would simply be unable to respond.

Put simply: If 600,000 people would each give $120, we could raise:

$76 million

I have suggested dividing the funds up as $40 mil for the 40 most competitive House seats and $6 mil. for the 6 most competitive Senate seats....but I think we could very easily raise more than this, and in short order....

Dean showed us the way. But since the collapse of the Dean campaign, the motivated grass-roots have been scattered to the four winds! It would require the effort of the entire blogshpere, forum community, DFA and Air America...

The impact would be to put such a strain on the Republican money machine at every level of political office that we could quite literally see a reverse 1994...

But what if the Republicans do the same thing....my God, a real grass roots movement within the Republican Party that would not be beholden to the special interests? What would we ever do?

This is a win-win scenario! If the Republicans refuse to adopt a more decentralized non-interest group money machine, they will lose every time. If they do....we no longer have a Republican Party dominated by special interest, or Democrats for that matter....and we have a name for that, it's called Democracy!!

But I promised you science, so here you go:

Gary Jacobson, in his book The Politics of Congressional Elections provides data on the impact of money in Congressional elections. Gathering data on campaign spending from 1972 to 1998, he provide the following interesting statistics:

Challengers for House seats who spend:

$0-100k = 0 % of winning
$100-200k = 3
$200-300k = 7
$300-400k = 12
$400-500k = 18
$500-700k = 21
$700-800k = 25
$800k+ = 33

House Challenges in Good/Neutral/Bad national forces:
(In other words, the national trends favor the challenging party)

percentage success read as: (G/N/B)
$200-300k = 17/5/2
$300-400k = 23/10/5
$400-500k = 33/12/7
$500-600k = 38/23/4
$600-700k = 25/28/8
$700-800k = 43/15/18
$800-900k = 53/24/0
$900+ = 59/18/16

Challenger to Incumbent Spending: % Challenger Wins:
(Incumbent amount - ($k) - Challenger amount ($k) - %)

less than 200/any challenger amount/0

200-400/200-400/3.1 (all other challenger amounts = 0)

400-600/200-400/4.2
400-600/400-600/12.1
400-600/600-800/40
400-600/greater than 800/50

600-800/200-400/6.6
600-800/400-600/12.7
600-800/600-800/36.4
600-800/greater than 800/25

greater than 800/200-400/8.5
greater than 800/400-600/14.5
greater than 800/600-800/17.4
greater than 800/greater than 800/39.3

All the data suggest that if we raise more than $800,000 per congressional district challengers, we have a chance to win about 1/3 of them...and if we keep our sitting Dems about $200k ahead of their challengers, we lose about 17% (not during bad years though...and could it be any worse for the Republicans?)

76 House races x .33 = 25 House pick ups...we only need 12 to win a majority!

The longer we wait, the less chance we have to make a bigger impact on the election...

At some point, if we truly want to show how much of an impact the blogs and this new democratic movement within the Party is for real, we have to do something that shows the kind of muscle we have....

What better way to so that than to send 25-30 new members to the House who have absolutely no ties to special interest?

Check out the Daily Kos today....

Marcos is setting up a fund raising campaign for 5 House seats and 1 Senate seat.....

My above post is what we should be shooting for, and probably more than is needed...

But consider this:

To give 40 House races $200,000 each and 6 Senate races $500,000 each, we would need only 275,000 people donating $40.....

That's $0.87 per race per person....

Are you guys telling me we can't swing this?!

If dKos, Atrios, MyDD, DU, Air America, DFA, etc....were to divide up, each doing what Marcos is doing.....we could flood this campaign with small amounts of donations from a large number of people....

Come on Clarkies and Deanies....you can do it!!! You're already doing it for Kerry....now lets really put a strain on the Repug money machine...

You see it is simple: If Repug House members run unchallenged, they can raise money and give it to those people running in the competitive seats.....but they all fear losing...and any challenge could force them to hold onto their cash, thereby depriving those competitive seats money....

Already, interest groups and individuals are running up against the hard cash donations for the Repugs.....all it would take is a massive influx of cash to make the whole shitty complex come crashing down....