Interest groups in electoral politics: 2012 in context

Forum (Germany)

Volumn 10, Issue 4, 2012, Pages 62-79

  Franz, Michael M ^a  

^a BOWDOIN COLLEGE   (United States)

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EID: 84879213952     PISSN: None     EISSN: 15408884     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1515/forum-2013-0007     Document Type: Article

References (28)

1. "Outside groups spend over $500 million in October", by David Leventhal. Politico, 11/2/12: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1112/83218.html (Accessed November 4, 2012).
2. Michael M. Franz. 2011. "The Citizens United election? Or same as it ever was?" T he Forum: A Journal of Applied Research in Contemporary Politics Vol. 8, Issue 4.
3. "The Numbers Don't Lie", Slate, by Rick Hasen, 3/9/12: http://www.slate.com/articles/news-and-politics/politics/2012/03/the-supreme-court-s-citizens-united-decision-has-led-to-an-explosion-of-campaign-spending-.html (Accessed 11/9/12).
4. See also Carey v. Federal Election Commission 791 F. Supp. 2d 121 (D.D.C. 2011), which allowed PACs unconnected to unions or corporations to run "hybrid" Super PACs that make candidate contributions (with regulated money) and independent expenditures (with unregulated money). The FEC has deadlocked (Advisory Opinion 2012 - 01) on whether to allow connected PACs (those run by unions and corporations) the same opportunity.
5. See R. Sam Garrett. 2012. "Seriously funny: understanding campaign finance policy through the Colbert Super PAC", St. Louis University Law Journal 56 (3): 711-723.
6. These fines were small in comparison to the total money raised and spent by the three organizations, compelling many to argue that groups could internalize the fines as "the cost of doing business." If so, the threat of an FEC investigation is not really a deterrent. Still, such negative publicity might have deterred donors from actively giving, which is one argument for the lower levels of outside spending in the congressional elections of 2006. For the facts surrounding the fines, see: http://www.fec.gov/press/press2006/20061213murs.html (Accessed 12/1/12).
7. How did political money get this loud? by Matt Bai, New York Times Magazine, 7/22/2012, p.MM14.
8. Bai's piece misses a lot of nuance about the elections following McCain-Feingold. For one, the 2006 elections did not see a huge amount of outside spending (as will be demonstrated below). This is probably because the rules at the time were effective at restraining them, especially in the immediate aftermath of such public discussion of 527s in the 2004 election. If the entire jump in outside spending was attributable to McCain-Feingold, 2006 stands out as a glaring anomaly. Second, the Supreme Court's 2007 ruling in Wisconsin Right to Life v. FEC 551 US 449 (2007) loosened some of these tight funding restrictions for groups and more importantly signaled that the Court was willing to rethink standing precedent.
9. These ads were at issue in Van Hollen v. FEC earlier in 2012. Television or radio ads that mention or depict a candidate for federal office and that air close to elections are called "electioneering communications." Groups are required to report these expenditures to the FEC, but they can easily avoid reporting the source of the funding. The lax regulation on donor disclosure was overturned by the District Court for the District of Columbia in March of 2012, but that ruling was overturned by the D.C. Appeals Court in September 2012.
10. This was an agreement between the two candidates to donate campaign funds to charity if any outside organization sponsored advertisements in the race. The pact was successful in keeping ads off the air, but it did not prevent interest groups from finding loopholes in the agreement. See: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-10-12/brown-warren-pact-undone-as-outside-groups-see-loopholes.html (Accessed 12/13/12).
11. The data are accessible at http://www.fec.gov/press/press2003/20030320party/20030103party.html (Accessed 12/1/12).
12. Campaign finance laws at the time prohibited parties from spending independently of candidates. This was overturned by the Supreme Court in 1996 in Colorado Republican Federal Campaign Committee v. FEC 518 US 604 (1996). Money spent in coordination with candidates, however, was and is capped. (Capped rates vary between House and Senate candidates, the latter of which depends on the number of voters in the state.)
13. Gregory Koger, Seth E. Masket, and Hans Noel. 2009. "Partisan webs: information exchange and party networks." British Journal of Political Science 39: 633-653.
14. "Koch brothers postpone post election meeting", Paige Lavender, The Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/11/koch-brothers-n-2277700.html (Accessed 12/14/12).
15. See, for example, Ken Vogel's report, "The billion-dollar bust?" Politco, 11/7/12. http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1112/83534.html (Accessed 12/12/12).
16. Andrew Gelman and Gary King. 1993. "Why are American presidential election campaign polls so variable when votes are so predictable?" British Journal of Political Science 23: 409 - 451.
17. For a review of the major political science predictions, see http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2012/09/14/obama-leads-in-at-least-eight-of-13-election-forecasts/ (Accessed 12/12/12).
18. Deborah Jordan Brooks with Michael Murov. 2012. "Assessing accountability in a post Citizens United Era: the effects of attack ad sponsorship by unknown indepentent groups." American Politics Research 40 (3): 383 - 418;
19. and Christopher Weber, Johanna Dunaway, and Tyler Johnson 2012. It's all in the name: source cue ambiguity and the persuasive appeal of campaign ads, Political Behavior 34: 561-584.
20. Michael Franz and Travis Ridout. 2010. Political advertising and persuasion in the 2004 and 2008 presidential election, American Politics Research 38 (2): 303-329.
21. The creative research design was borrowed from Gregory A. Huber and Kevin Arceneaux. 2007. "Identifying the persuasive effects of presidential advertising. American Journal of Political Science 51 (4): 957 - 977.
22. One caveat concerns the identification of battleground states. This is not especially controversial in most instances, but candidates often target a second tier of states, making their exclusion as battlegrounds not exactly a random assignment of ads to counties. In all instances, I played with inclusive and exclusive lists of battleground states, and effects are quite robust. My list of battleground states in 2012 is: CO, IA, WI, OH, NH, VA, NC, and FL. 37This analysis excludes congressional races, mostly because county-level data are not yet available. For the presidential investigation below, the data are current as of early December and are subject to some change as vote returns are adjusted in many places. The county-level data were purchased from Dave Leip's Election Atlas (http://uselectionatlas.org/). I should also note that the models do not include measures of candidate visits to different counties in the fall. This is partly because the data collection for such visits in 2012 is ongoing. However, their exclusion from the models in 2004 and 2008 do not change the coefficient effects for ads in any significant way.
23. See, for example, "Dem donors split on 2012 strategy", Politico, by Kenneth Vogel, 11/11/10: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1110/44980.html (Accessed 11/9/12).
24. "Romney spent more money on ads and got much less", by Tom Hamburger, Washington Post, 12/12/12: http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/romney-campaigns-tv-ad-strategies-criticized-in-election-postmortems/2012/12/11/a2855aec-4166-11e2-bca3-aadc9b7e29c5-story.html (Accessed 12/13/12).
25. Michael J. Malbin, Peter W. Brusoe, and Brendan Glavin. 2012. "Small donors, big democracy: New York City's matching funds as a model for the nation and states", Election Law Journal 11 (1): 3 - 20.
26. Peter Wallison and Joel Gora 2009. Better parties, better government: a realistic program for campaign finance reform, AEI Press, pp. 63, 70, 72 - 73.
27. Regarding the current system, there is a lot of misinformation in the public discourse about the influence of donors on candidates. Lots of political science research fails to find direct links between PAC donations and legislative voting, for example. See Stephen Ansolabehere, John M. de Figueiredo, and James M. Snyder 2003. "Why is there so little money in politics?", Journal of Economic Perspectives 17 (1): 105 - 130. But, also, there is a tendency to talk about Wall Street donations or donations from certain industries, and to presume that such donations are jointly directed. The Center for Responsive Politics aggregates contributions from individuals by reported employer and industry, for example, and while this is helpful aggregate information, it facilitates arguments about industry influence. In reality, no individual can give a candidate more than $5000 in a 2-year election. Candidates might be influenced by such dollars, or fund-raising help that comes from bundlers, but it is often less appreciated that wealthy citizens have almost no means of leveraging that wealth in a candidate's campaign directly. (Pubitemid 38882447)
28. David Primo and Jeffrey Milyo. 2006. "Campaign finance laws and political efficacy: evidence from the States", Election Law Journal 5 (1): 23-39.