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Sometimes, my political contributions are a form of self-expression: They’re intended to show solidarity with a cause or candidate; or as a statement of my values; or even sometimes just as a way to say “thanks” for an inspirational or amusing ad on television or social media.
But more often, I want to send my dollars to the federal, state and local campaigns across the country, where additional money can have the most impact. I want these contributions to come from my head as well as my heart. And I know not to put much trust in polls, because those have been misleading in recent elections. So instead, I rely heavily on the following six more enduring (and more quantitative) targeting criteria:
How did the vote go in the state or district in the last presidential election? Forty years ago, Tip O'Neill quipped that “all politics is local.” But in our own era, it would be more accurate to say that “all politics is national.” How a person votes for president has become a better and better predictor of how they voted in other races. Ticket-splitting hit a 92-year low in 2012. In 2016, no states split their Senate-presidential vote for the first time ever. Voting patterns in gubernatorial elections have also come to resemble those in presidential races. And in recent cycles attitudes toward the presidency have had more of an impact on state legislative races than attitudes toward the state legislature itself. More and more voters are increasingly inclined to stick with their president’s party in state and local races, regardless of the merits or demerits of the particular candidates or issues in those races.
Nationally, how will the Democrats perform in this election, relative to how they did in the last presidential election? One of the most ironclad rules in American politics is that the president’s party loses ground in midterm elections. In the 18 midterm elections from 1946-2018, there has only been one exception: 2002, when election day came a year after the bombing of the World Trade Center. In 2018, the Republican share of the national vote for U.S. House candidates dropped 4.9 percentage points as compared to 2016. In 2014, the Democratic share of the national vote for U.S.House candidates dropped about 3.5 points as compared to 2012.
What are the reasons to think a particular candidate might over-perform or under-perform, relative to a generic Democrat? Of course, the quality of the candidate—and their opponent—can still matter. For instance, Raphael Warnock performed a bit better than Jon Ossoff in their respective U.S. Senate runoffs in 2021: Warnock won by 1.0% of the vote share, while Ossoff won by 0.6%. Incumbency can help too, including because it’s easier for incumbents to raise money, and they usually don’t have to spend any of it on contested primaries. But, other than presidential races, candidate quality and incumbency don’t seem to matter as much anymore.
In particular, personal scandals no longer seem to have much impact on down-ballot election results. Consider the 2020 results in North Carolina, for instance: Joe Biden, generally acknowledged as a man of considerable personal integrity, lost the state by 0.7% of the vote. Cal Cunningham, caught sexting with a woman not his wife during the campaign, lost his Senate race in the same state by a 0.9% vote share. In the same cycle, popular and scandal-free incumbent governor Roy Cooper won by a 2.2% vote share.
Personal scandals, even far worse ones, may matter even less for state legislative races. Chaz Nuttycombe, who tracks state legislative races across the country, looked at the results where there were scandal-plagued candidates who had what were thought to be competitive races in 2020. He concluded: “It doesn't seem that scandals affect state legislative candidates anymore: They can pretty much get away with anything they want in an era of hyper-polarization, even down-ballot. Every scandal-plagued incumbent we mentioned here won. The guy who ran over a kid's dog? Won. Mike Maroney, who solicited prostitutes twice within a year? Won. The Democrat in the Oregon House who faced sexual harassment accusations? Won. The Republican who faced accusations of molesting children in a district in the Kansas City suburbs? He won.”
What does it cost to run an effective campaign in this particular state or district? Does the candidate already have that much, in cash on hand? Are they on track to raise it without additional help? It is true that the candidate who raises more money usually wins. But it’s often the case that candidates raise more money because they’re considered likely to win or simply because they are already more popular than their opponents. Self-financed candidates, who often have access to essentially unlimited campaign funds, and who often far outspend their opponents, tend to fail miserably.
My perspective on fundraising is that each campaign has a spending ceiling: a point at which the particular campaign no longer has any way to usefully spend additional dollars, given the characteristics of the state or district. Spending ceilings depend in part on the capacity of the particular campaign, and in part on when the relevant media markets get saturated. How plausible is the campaign’s plan to scale up voter outreach and GOTV? At what point will the voters have seen the campaign’s ads so many times they’re no longer paying attention?
My own belief, not universally shared, is that the spending ceiling in a given race generally does not especially depend on how much the opponent in that race is spending. It does, however, very much depend on where the race is taking place: There’s a lot more room to spend usefully, on both advertising and field operations, on a statewide race in Pennsylvania than on a statewide race in New Hampshire.
The combination of online viral marketing and Actblue has made it very easy for unprecedented numbers of people across the country to donate to Democratic candidates anywhere in the country. This means that some categories of candidates are guaranteed to hit their spending ceiling, and indeed raise far more money than they can usefully spend.
My view is that, in 2020, every single Democratic candidate in a competitive U.S. senate race hit their spending ceiling. The 2020 elections saw nine of the 10 most expensive Senate races ever —and the same will be true in 2022. For this reason, I personally am not contributing to any U.S. Senate candidates this cycle; I think it is overwhelmingly likely that all truly competitive Senate candidates will easily raise all the money that they can usefully spend without any help from me. I’m also unlikely to give much to the incumbent U.S. House candidates who are running for re-election; they, too, will almost all raise the money they need without additional help.
Instead, in the cycle, I’m targeting key governor’s races; non-incumbent U.S. House candidates (especially those that are broke after winning competitive primaries); and state legislative races.
Is early money likely to be especially useful in this particular race? Another axiom of political campaigns in our country is that “early money is better.” That is sometimes true, but often, it’s not. For an effectively managed campaign with tight spending discipline and a smart field and advertising plan for the whole election cycle, early money is indeed worth much more than later contributions. However, at least as often, campaigns spend too much of their early money on early things that won’t matter by the time the actual election happens. So to know whether an early contribution is an especially good investment, you really have to do your homework (or rely on someone else to do it) about whether the campaign in question has a good plan in place and has the staff capacity to implement it effectively.
Is there a state Democratic party that can effectively support the candidate? Some of the best political investments, both for now and the future, are in state Democratic parties. Where there is a well-run state party, with an effective plan for building support for Democrats over the longer term, there is an opportunity to invest in sustained success. Years of sustained investment in state parties in Wisconsin, Michigan and Georgia played a key role in flipping these states blue in 2020 and making Donald Trump a one-term president. Investments in state parties are also investments in the whole Democratic ticket—in all the candidates up and down the ballot, including for secretary of state, state attorney general, and state supreme court. When considering contributions to state parties, it’s important to do the research, or have someone you trust do it for you. Some state parties are established or emerging juggernauts, while others are still struggling to be even minimally effective.
More generally, the best political investments continue to pay dividends even after the next election cycle is over. For instance, Stacey Abrams didn’t win her campaign to be governor in 2018, but the field work done by that campaign and its allies on the ground helped develop the local capacity for Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff to win their Senate races two years later. Investing in the Abrams race turned out to be a great investment in the future of the Democratic Party in Georgia. Conversely, the hundreds of millions of dollars invested in the 2020 senate races in Kentucky and South Carolina didn’t do anything to bolster Democratic capacity in those states, and indeed, might have made things worse rather than better.
Wally Reuther (a pseudonym) is a former campaign research director and press secretary who now works to support public schools
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