In our new policy paper, "Does Money Buy Elections?", Policy Director Dan Weeks analyzes the impact that campaign funding has on the outcome of congressional elections. Dan's findings are fascinating: While campaigns require a minimum amount of funding to be competitive, additional funding past this threshold has a very marginal impact on who wins. Even when it's millions of dollars more:

The true picture of campaign spending and its implications for electoral success is more nuanced than the vote-buying hypothesis suggests. Simply put, campaign dollars are not created equal. The force of the first dollar spent in terms of of its vote-getting effect for the candidate is considerably greater than that of the millionth. And once a million has been spent, in all but the costliest of districts, additional spending by incumbents and challengers alike means almost nothing at all.

Implications for Campaign Finance Reform:

• Improving the funding prospects of qualified challengers could meaningfully increase the level of competition in congressional campaigns
• Funding levels should vary with the competitive spending threshold of a given district to enable unknown candidates to be heard, but they do not necessarily need to match the maximum spending of privately funded candidates
• Reforms aimed at limiting candidate spending or restricting access to funds are likely to have an adverse effect on challengers

The full paper is below -- or you can view the full screen version or download the full PDF or text version.