The Money Map

This very interesting website allows you to browse through a map of the United States and click on a state or district to see what candidates were running for office and, more interestingly, what kind of money was raised and spent on their campaign. You can search between Senate elections or House elections, and shows you who raised more money, who won, who was the incumbent, and other elucidating facts. I found it interesting that in the Oklahoma Senate race, for instance, the republican incumbent Tom Coburn raised two and a half million dollars, while his democratic challenger is listed as raising a nice, hefty, zero dollars.

While that is unusual, what is common throughout the entire map is that the incumbent collects far more money than the challenger. This makes sense, as an incumbent has clout and name recognition, which give him the means to raise funds. But it also fits our economic model. For a new challenger, the marginal return of votes for each dollar spent is increasing at an increasing rate. But an incumbent, who's name is already in the public sphere, requires more dollars to earn more votes--his marginal return for each dollar spent is less, so to earn extra votes he has to spend more.

But it seems possible in this election, that strategy might never have worked. This Wall Street Journal Article purports that 48% of Americans would rather vote someone new into Congress than someone with 10 years experience. This extreme shift in public perception to "Throw the bums out" from the typical, almost blind reelection of incumbents, did not bode well for those spending the most money this election season. And, because of the political make-up of the time, this meant it didn't bode well for the Democrats. Being an incumbent almost became a burden rather than a blessing. It also has interesting implications for our economic model. Would an incumbents spending start to have a negative marginal return? The more s/he flouted his/her name, which reminded people of his/her time in office, would that cause some to vote against them? Maybe the model for this election was a little quirkier than usual. Perhaps incumbents were doomed from the onset, which means they wasted astronomically large sums of money, or their spending didn't help (and possibly hurt) them, which has the same implications.