The Center for Responsive Politics has an extremely interesting post today about how many victors in congressional races outspent the losers. The answer, in case you didn’t guess, is almost all of them (93% in the House).
There were 28 House races where the candidate who spent less money still won the race. (This appears to discount the role of third party expenditures, as you’ll see in the case of LA-06, where the role of Cassidy was to spend little while outside parties poured in the cash. Perhaps a project for a future day will be to add IEs to these numbers and re-order them.) All of the races you will recognize from our competitive House Ratings list. If you want to see the list in its entirety, please click through to their story… but I thought I’d add a wrinkle and rate the races not according to how much was spent but according to the winner/loser ratio. In other words, which victorious candidates won most efficiently? Here are the top 10:
| District | Winner | $$$ | Loser | $$$ | Ratio |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GA-13 | Scott (D) | $842K | Honeycutt (R) | $4,406K | 19.1% |
| LA-06 | Cassidy (R) | $620K | Cazayoux (D) | $2,279K | 27.2% |
| PA-03 | Dahlkemper (D) | $712K | English (R) | $1,905K | 37.4% |
| FL-16 | Rooney (R) | $1,021K | Mahoney (D) | $2,418K | 42.2% |
| SC-01 | Brown (R) | $702K | Ketner (D) | $1,641K | 42.8% |
| NC-08 | Kissell (D) | $1,100K | Hayes (R) | $2,509K | 43.8% |
| AL-02 | Bright (D) | $850K | Love (R) | $1,929K | 44.1% |
| OR-05 | Schrader (D) | $1,030K | Erickson (R) | $2,308K | 44.7% |
| NJ-07 | Lance (R) | $942K | Stender (D) | $2,092K | 45.0% |
| VA-02 | Nye (D) | $733K | Drake (R) | $1,372K | 53.4% |
In the Senate, there were only two races where the more frugal candidate won: North Carolina and New Hampshire. New Hampshire was very close (99%), but Kay Hagan won this one on the cheap: $6,014K to Dole’s $15,716K, or 38% (although, again, you should factor in the millions dumped into NC by the DSCC).
One other lesson from this story: self-funding doesn’t work. 49 Congressional candidates spend $500,000 of their own money, and of them, only 6 House candidates and 1 Senate candidate won. Perhaps the saddest case of this was Sandy Treadwell, who ran against Kirsten Gillibrand in NY-20. Treadwell poured in at least $5.9 million of his own money. (Gillibrand spent $3.6 million, but only $250 of that was her own money.) The return on Treadwell’s investment: priceless. If by ‘priceless,’ you mean losing to Gillibrand by a 23-point margin.
However those Cazayoux numbers, I believe, also include the amount he spent on the special election. (Indeed, his reports seem to have “reset the clock” sometime after the special election, and his final pre-general report indicates that he had only spent $955K on his re-election campaign through October 15th.)
rich, like 200 million dollar rich. He could afford. But wow, has Gillenbrand proved herself. I never thought she would have managed to become so entrenched in this district, especially after she only beat Sweeney because it came out two weeks before the election he had got taken to jail for beating his wife a year or so earlier.
who self-funded to the degree of one million? Mark Warner?
I still don’t quite understand what happened. I hear Linda Stender didn’t run a good campaign. So really, what the hell did all that money pay for??!! And was Leonard Lance that much of a superior candidate?
Is there just a hex over Democrats in NJ-07? Or will we some day find someone who can actually win this seat?
I went through the House data for every Republican held seat in the House in 2006 including independent expenditures. It took three or four days although I might be able to do it in less than half the time this cycle. There are a lot more resources available. In that case, 17 candidates were outspent but still won: 16 Democrats and 1 Republican. Only one candidate won while spending less than 60% of his/her opponent’s expenditures: Carol Shea-Porter at under 30%.
There did seem to be a declining utility to expenditures. When the Republican spent say $4.5 million a challenger spending a million less was not at much of a disadvantage.
The creepiest overexpenditure to victory that year was Vern Buchanan who won a very contested election while spending $8 million (counting everything). Most of it was courtesy of Vern.
Two very big recipients of outside money in 2006 were Nancy Boyda who went from a huige deficit to a very small edge in an election where each side spent $1.3 million (Boyda was up about $50 K counting $700 K from the DCCC). Her decision to forego the advertising this time around because it pisssed of Republicans was unfortunate. The othe was CA-11 where the enironmental groups spent over a million in sinking Richard Pombo.
Overall, the successful Democratic challengers spent 82.5% (including outside money) of what the Republicans spent.
is bullshit. It’s counting the special election money from the spring. That should not be counted towards his spending for the fall election!