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Dollars on the Sidewalk: Should U.S. Presidential Candidates Advertise in Uncontested States?
Author(s) -
Urban Carly,
Niebler Sarah
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
american journal of political science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 6.347
H-Index - 170
eISSN - 1540-5907
pISSN - 0092-5853
DOI - 10.1111/ajps.12073
Subject(s) - spillover effect , advertising , competition (biology) , presidential campaign , presidential system , commission , politics , political science , matching (statistics) , economics , business , microeconomics , law , statistics , ecology , biology , mathematics
Presidential candidates in the United States do not intentionally advertise in states without rigorous competition for electoral votes. However, in some areas of noncompetitive states, media markets overlap with battleground states, exposing these regions to political ads. These spillover advertisements allow us to examine the relationship between advertisements and individual campaign contributions, with data from the Wisconsin Advertising Project and the Federal Elections Commission. Using propensity‐score matching within uncontested states, we find that 2008 aggregate giving in zip codes exposed to political ads was approximately $6,100 (28.1% of mean contributions) more than in similar zip codes without advertisements.