Campaign Spending in City Council Elections : A Comparison of At - Large and District Contests
Abstract
This study seeks to add to the
research
literature on
city council electoral system
s
by
investigating
the association between campaign spending and whether councilmembers are
elected at
-
large or by district. In doing so, it incorporates
an original dataset collected from
various public sources and applies a m
ixed effects model to account for the nesting of election
contests within cities.
This study finds that
winning
candidates for at
-
large contests
expend
approximately
$76,000 more
(in 2012 dollars)
than district candidates after controlling for a
variety of contest and city
-
related effects
.
This finding has relevance to cities that are evaluating
a change to their electoral system
in order
to increase political participation and decrease special interest influence.
Collections
- MA in Policy Studies [178]