Analysis of 2009 Campaign Finance Trends — What Will Happen in 2015?
Through the process of trying to understand voter turnout, a related aspect I’m researching is the candidates’ campaign spending. It’s interesting to see where and to whom all those campaign dollars are being directed because, in some ways, it determines who makes up the engaged “selectorate.” It’s possible that, if the candidates are willing to change up the status quo, their new strategies could inadvertently expand voter turnout while helping them stand out from the competition.
A group of people has already begun organizing campaign finance data in interesting ways. In this year’s Houston Hackathon, one of the winning teams created a website to help with transparency in Houston’s campaign finances (end product found at houstoncampaignfinance.com). Check out the website for visualizations of campaign contributions and expenditures broken down by election, candidate, and rankings of top givers and receivers.
Although this Hackathon project is a great leap towards improving transparency in campaign finances, there is still little progress in the actual system for campaign finance reporting. The city’s website where the campaign finance reports can be accessed states that the “datasets are intended to accurately represent what is filed by filers…” This means that if campaign filers give poor information, then only poor information will be available for the public to see. The city has no authority to hold filers accountable, so it’s up to the citizens of Houston to make sure campaigns are maintaining transparency and integrity, but this is incredibly difficult without the city’s efforts to support citizens or to pressure campaigns. Moving forward in this election year and in future elections, the City of Houston will need to meet external efforts halfway to systemically impact campaign finance transparency.
While looking through the campaign finance dataset, I was specifically interested in the 2009 general election information. Considering that it was the last race without an incumbent, it should provide a similar picture for what we could expect through this 2015 election season. After pulling a few numbers from the Hackathon’s campaign finance website, here’s what I put together:
It looks like there was a negative correlation between spending and number of votes received in the 2009 Houston general election (here’s the interactive graph as a Tableau Viz). A few other numbers based on the election data of the top three candidates from 2009: average cost per vote was ~$79 per vote, and average total expenditure was ~$3.5 million.
This year’s election finances are outpacing 2009, so we can expect both of these averages to be higher. What we should keep an eye out for is continued analysis of the spending power of each candidate. The two candidates taking the campaign finance lead as of the July 15th deadline are Adrian Garcia and Stephen Costello. Garcia has raised $1.3 M, only $7,423 more than Costello. Garcia has spent over $120K compared to Costello who has spent over $600K. But in a recently conducted poll, 15% of respondents said they would vote for Garcia, whereas only 4% would have voted for Costello.
Assuming the top candidates in this election will have similar campaign budgets as those from the 2009 election (though this year is projected to be the most expensive election yet), expenses would average to $79 per vote, yielding about 44K votes, which is all enough to get into the run-off. What would happen if, instead, candidates directed $69 per vote in the static electorate? That would result in $440K that could be allocated to activating a new voter segment. If the average cost for newly activated votes is assumed to still be $79, this $440K yields about 5,500 additional votes. In 2009, the difference between second and third-place was just over 6,000 votes, so gaining new votes outside of the static electorate could make the difference for a candidate getting into the run-offs.
Although this may be an oversimplication of campaign expenses and spending strategies, it is something to think about if the race remains open and competitive. Looking at the results from the 2009 general election, as well as how this year’s race is shaping up, I am curious to see what strategies the candidates have up their sleeves to edge out the competition if the trends of 2009 are not to repeat themselves. If spending more does not necessarily translate to more votes, then the candidates may be planning for changes over the next four months to their campaign and spending strategies. Hopefully one of the candidates is willing to change up the game for the sake of standing out in this competitive race and maybe even an unintentional increase in voter turnout.
