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.