Campaign finance and national elections: An empirical investigation for Argentina, 2005-2013
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.55444/2451.7321.2017.v55.n1.28364Keywords:
campaign contributions, elections, incumbency adantageAbstract
In this paper we examine the impact of campaign contributions on electoral results in Argentine national elections for the period 2005-2013. Using previously unavailable micro-level data on private campaign contributions we test several hypothesis concerning the relationship between contributions and electoral results. Our findings suggest that while parties receive both public and private funds, only private contributions are significantly associated with electoral performance –i.e. the higher the ratio of private to public contributions the higher the vote share. Interestingly, while challengers see an increase in vote shares as a result of an increase in private contributions, this is not the case for incumbents. One possible explanation for this is that incumbents have other sources of funding available to them –official advertising, informal campaign spending- which may be substitutes to formal private funding. This may have important implications in terms of policy design as limiting (or even prohibiting) private contributions may actually be more detrimental to challengers than to incumbents, with the likely effect of increasing incumbency advantage even further.
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Copyright (c) 2017 Sebastián Freille, Pablo Soffietti
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