Putting It All Together: Resource Allocation and Vote Outcomes

Abstract

Abstract This final empirical chapter considers the impact of candidate appearances and television advertising buys on vote outcomes in states and media markets. Effects are estimated separately for Republican and Democratic campaigns using statistical models that account for confounding variables, most notably past votes as well as current national trends. This analysis finds modest effects associated with state-level analyses and slightly larger effects associated with available market-level data. Consistent with a “middling” perspective of campaign effects, similarities in Electoral College strategies and high levels of execution—especially in the most recent era—can produce rough parity in the ability of campaigns to significantly affect statewide results and Electoral Vote totals, often leading to outcomes where one campaign’s impact is effectively checked by the other’s. Nonetheless, close elections such as those in 1960, 1968, 1976, 2000, 2004, and 2016 might have tipped the other way with shifts in resource allocation across battleground states.