campaign expenditures in mexico

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Electoral outcomes and campaign expenditures: does money matter to win an election?

Juan C. Benavides & Vicente A. Rivera - 1 -

ELECTORAL OUTCOMES AND CAMPAIGN EXPENDITURES:

DOES MONEY MATTER TO WIN AN ELECTION?

Abstract

This paper examines whether campaign expenditures have consequences for elections

outcomes. We analyze elections to Mexican Senate from 2000 and 2006 and determine whether

candidates’ vote shares are altered by changes in campaign spending.

INTRODUCTION

The general objective of this term paper is to explore the relationship between electoral

outcomes and campaign expenditures. We also analyze if other factors, such as incumbents influence,

gender, and regional performance play an important role in electoral results.

The fundamental feature of the political process in a democratic society is that voters have a

weak interest to be informed on candidate postures and perspectives. This apathy presented by voters

is called in academia “rational ignorance”. Rational ignorance is a term most often found in economics,

particularly in public choice theory: “Ignorance about an issue is said to be “rational” when the cost of

education oneself about the issue sufficiently to make an informed decision can outweigh any potential

benefit one could reasonably expect to gain from that decision, and so it would be irrational to waste

time doing so”1. Rational Ignorance has negative consequences for the quality of decisions made by

large number of people. This is the case of elections, where the probability of one persons vote

changing the outcome is very small.

Fighting against rational ignorance has been the priority in the election process in countries like

Mexico. That is why lobbying activities and campaign expenditures try to fill this void by trying to

persuade voters to support particular positions. Some of the incumbents or challengers even try toinfluence heads of unions and officials by bribing them with gifts, money and favors.

The degree of competition is not perfect since some groups or candidates are able to collect

much more money. Rational ignorance implies that candidates’ main objective would be to persuade

voters to vote for them. Given the power of communications and mass media in society, one may

1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_ignorance





expect that a large number of hours and a lot of money would be spent influencing voters and officials

through these sorts of industries.

It is important to notice that our case of study is particularly focused on the Mexican Senate

elections in each of the 32 states for the years 2000 and 20006

To meet the objectives of our study, the present article proceeds as follows: Section 1 reviews

the literature on the effects of campaign spending describing the main results in the most prominent

papers. It also notes that these papers reach radically different conclusions regarding the impact of

candidate spending. Section 2 establishes the most important hypothesis we want to prove in the

present paper. Section 3 reports the econometric models, variables, estimation methods and

assumptions used. Section 4 carefully describes the data used in the empirical analysis. Section 5

discusses the interpretation and strength of the empirical results and section 6 provides concluding

observations. It is important to emphasize that more research is required before the arguments

considered can be decisively established, not only in the case of Senate elections but in other political

competitions and environments.

1. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

To which extent does campaign expenditures limits benefit or worsens the democratic arena is

an issue of great discussion. Our objective is to present a short summary of the theoretical framework

that surrounds this subject.

Campaign expenditures are a vigorously debated issue. Some claim that amounts of campaign

spending has a bias in favor of the candidates who spend the most, while others argue that the amount

spent in political campaigns do not determine elections and can be helpful in promoting competition.

Most of the theoretical models we found that emphasize the fact that the amount on campaign

spending contributes to electoral results have been studied in the U.S. However, little is known on the

empirical validity of these models. The academic debate regarding campaign-spending effects can be

traced back to a study made by Jacobson (1978)2. More recent literature on campaign spending finds a

positive effect of challengers’ and incumbents’ campaign spending on vote shares (Stratmann, 1991,

1995; Bronars and Lott 1997)3.

2 Jacobson, Gary, “The Effects of Campaign Spending on Congressional Elections,” American Political Science Review, 72, 1978, 469-91.

3 Stratmann, Thomas, “What Do Campaign Contributions Buy? Deciphering Causal Effects of Money and Votes.” Southern Economic Journal, 57,

1991, 606-64.Stratmann, Thomas, "Campaign Contributions and Congressional Voting: Does the Timing of Contributions Matter?" Review of Economics and

Statistics, February 1995, 72 (1).





Coate (2001)4 specifically addresses the issue of limiting campaign spending. He shows under

which conditions limits on campaign spending increases or decreases the margin of victory on an

electoral race. His study shows that campaign contributions limits narrow the margin of victory.

Earlier models on campaign spending limits suggest that incumbents have an advantage over

challengers since they have accumulated name recognition and have had more campaign spending in

previous elections (Lott, 1987) 5. Coete assures that campaign spending limits lead to less brand name

development by incumbents and give challengers a competitive advantage. He argues that if

contribution limits effectively raise the competitive advantage of challengers, more challengers will

enter the race.

A more recent paper by Aparicio-Castillo (2003)6 analyzes campaign contributions to

Assemblies elections from 1980 to 2001. His findings also establish that contribution limits lead to

closer elections.

A resent article by Becker (2005)7 on campaign expenditures doubts about the advantages of

limiting campaign contributions. He argues that interest groups compete in many ways, such as

influencing voters indirectly to favor particular points of view, hence they should also compete through

campaign expenditure. His main argument is that political incumbents have many advantages over

challengers because they get publicity while in office and can use their position to steer legislation

toward projects that help their constituents, hence effective limits on campaign contributions make it

harder for newcomers to challenge incumbents by raising funds to gain the recognition among voters.

Becker suggests that entrenched economic groups like unions play a much more important role incountries with sharp limits on campaign spending; for this reason, it is far more difficult for political

outsiders to enter the political arena to run for important offices.

OTHER RESEARCH OF INTEREST

Research in spending and electoral outcomes has generated what is called the “Spending Electoral

Theory”. Payne (1991) establishes some postulates of this theory:

1) The idea that voters are reflecting their own rational interest when they vote for the candidate

that spends more.

Bronars, Stephen G. and Lott, John R. Jr., “Do Campaign Donations Alter How a Politician Votes? Or, Do Donors Support Candidates Who Value

the Same Things That They Do?” Journal of Law and Economics, 40, 2, October 1997, 317-350.4 Coate, Stephen, “Political Competition with Campaign Contributions and Informative Advertising,” 2001, NBER Working Paper #8693.

5 Lott, John R. “The Effect of Nontransferable Property Rights on the Efficiency of Political Markets,” Journal of Public Economics, 31(2), 1987,

231-46.6 “Competition policy for elections: Do campaign contribution limits matter?” (with Thomas Stratmann) Public Choice, vol. 127, no. 1-2, April

2006, 177-206.7 http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/ ; “On campaign Finance Reform”; Nov. 06, 2005.





2) Voters are misinformed and irrational, leaving the elections to be dominated by special interest

voters.

3) Campaign spending is the key to success.

From Paynes’ perspective there are two hypothesis related to the influence of campaign

spending on electoral outcomes:

a) The electoral consequence hypothesis: incorporates the idea that the candidates who spend

more obtain more electoral benefits because of it.

b) Legislator insecurity hypothesis: Electoral competition and the fear of failure forces candidates

to approve more spending that even they believe necessary.

Based on the first hypothesis, more spending entails a greater probability of success, since

greater spending permits a better identification of the characteristics of the electorate.

Although Mexican electoral legislature and processes varies greatly from the United States it is

useful to cite the main conclusions on the effects of campaign spending of the most prominent papers.

In the US, there have been several studies performing regressions of candidate vote totals on candidate

spending levels. The basic model used is:

Vote inc = α + B1(spendinginc) + B2(spendingchal) + B3x +µ

Where Vote inc is the incumbent share of the two-party vote, spending inc is total incumbent

campaign spending. Spending chal is the total challenger campaign spending and x represents a set of variables other than campaign spending that are thought to influence candidate vote totals, such as

challenger quality or constituency partisanship. The particular function of campaign spending is usually

either the spending level itself or the natural logarithm of spending. There has been significant

disagreement on how the basic model should be estimated. The main methodological approaches and

results are summarized in the 2 tables below.





Table 1 shows the predicted change in the candidates vote share associated with a $100,000

increase in candidate spending. The Jacobson (1985) model predicts that spending an extra $100,000

will yield only a slightly increase in the incumbent’s share of the vote (about a 0.1% increase), whereas a

similar spending increase results in a large boost for the challenger (about a 2.2% increase). Green and

Krasno (1988) predict large increases in vote share for both the incumbent and challenger, an

approximately 2-percentage point increase for each. Erikson and Palfrey (2000) find that an extra

$100,000 is worth about 1% for the average challenger and 0.6% for the average incumbent. Levitt

(1994) in contrasts predicts that increasing spending has only a minimal effect, regardless of whether

the candidate is incumbent or challenger. Table 1 illustrated the dramatic differences in estimated

spending effects. The coefficient values vary widely across studies. Table 2 converts the values in table

1 into the cost per additional vote implied by the Table 1 estimates. The dollar figures listed in Table 2

are the cost of changing the vote margin by one vote. Table 2 also shows that depending on the model

the cost of changing the vote margin ranges from moderate to exorbitant.





Returning to Mexico, Garcia and Sandoval (2004) also analyzed the results of campaign

spending in the federal electoral outcomes of 1997 concluding that there is a weak relationship between

campaign spending and electoral outcomes.

With regard to influence of the political party in power, evidence suggests that voters hold

political civil employees responsible for the prevailing macroeconomic conditions and therefore award

good economic performance. Papers related to this topic are Abrams y Butkiewicz (1995) that analyze

US 1992 elections; Panzer y Paredes that focus on Chilean elections; Meloni (1997) that empirically

studies Menem reelection in 1995 and Abuelafia y Meloni (2000) that work with a panel of Argentinean

presidential electoral outcomes. Authors that analyze governor elections are Peltzman (1987) who

constructs Panel data for the US stated for the 1949-1984 period and find that voters respond to local

variables that the governor can control (mainly the budget) and that national economic conditions

affect electoral outcome.

Finally, before proceeding with the econometric model and estimations, it is important to

remember that electoral outcomes are a function not only of campaign spending but involve a complex

mixture of political, economic, social and cultural factors whose weights can vary through time and

electoral jurisdictions.

2. RESEARCH QUESTIONS AND HYPOTHESES

This preliminary research will help us understand how the elections in Mexico behave and how

the most influential factors have evolved during these two elections. Is it the level of expenditures in

propaganda and mass media which determines who win an election, if yes, by how much? Is the gender

a decisive factor to win an election? How has evolved the importance of gender in the Mexican

elections? Does the geographical factor have an impact in the electoral outcomes? Does the support of

the President, Governors or incumbent Senators of the same parties of certain candidates to the senate

influence the election too much or too little, or has no effect at all? Do some economic factors of the

Mexican states as economic growth or unemployment play any role in adding or subtracting votes to a

candidate? How do the coalitions or political alliances affect the results in an election? These are some

of the questions we are interested in answering throughout this research.





The hypotheses we are thinking about are:

1. Campaign expenditures played an important role in these two elections; if so, expenses are a decisive factor in

winning an election. The more a candidate spends, the more he/she gains votes.

2. Women candidates gain fewer votes than men candidates.

3. The fact that a candidate belongs to the same party of the governor, the president or current Senators will bring

him/her more votes if they have created good economic conditions in their states or in the country.

4. The geographical factor is a strong factor that benefits certain candidates of certain parties independently of

expenditures or other considerations. This is called the heavy vote.

As we see, the hypotheses we are considering are based on intuition and past empirical

observations. In the case of Mexico, and all its States, electoral spending has always played an important

role in the results obtained by candidates in an election. Usually the candidate with more financial

resources to spend tends to win an election. Generally, this is because expenditures are allocated for

giving people gifts, improving the candidate’s image, and increasing the idea of security that people may

see in a rich candidate.

3. ECONOMETRIC MODEL AND ESTIMATION METHODS

Particularly, this working paper is concerned on estimating an econometric model of the

following form.

pvote = β 0 + β 1 y06 + β 2 lncepmm + β 3 y06*lncepmm + β 4 female +

β 5 y06*female + β 6 amexunem * govparty + β 7 coalition

+ β 8 pastsen + β 9 govparty + β 10 presparty + β 11 north + µ

Let us proceed to describe the variables we are going to analyze in the subsequent sections.

TABLE 1. DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF VARIABLES USED IN THE MODELS

VARIABLES DESCRIPTION





RESPONSE

pvote % Vote received by senatorial dual candidacies (SDC) in 2000 and 2006.

INDEPENDENT OR PREDICTORS

y06 Dummy variable equal to 1 when the year is 2006, and 0 otherwise.

Lncepmm Natural log of total campaign expenditures on propaganda and mass media

of each of the SDCs

Female Dummy variable equal to 1 if a SDC includes at least one woman. It is equal

to zero if the SDC does not have any woman.

amexunem Dummy variable equal to 1 when the state unemployment rate is above the

national average in the year of the election; and 0 otherwise.

govparty Dummy variable equal to 1 when the party of the governor is the same as

that of the SDC, and 0 otherwise.

pastsen Dummy variable equal to 1 when the senators of the previous period of the

election are of the same party of a particular SDC; it is 0 in any other case.

presparty It takes the value 1 when the president of Mexico is of the same party as the

SDC; and 0 otherwise.

coalition Dummy variable that takes the value of 1 if the SDC is in a coalition, and 0

if the SDC is postulated by and individual party.

north 0/1 categorical variable which takes the value of 1 if the SDC is running in

the north side of Mexico, and 0 otherwise. We have divided the country into

two areas, north and south, being south our base of comparison.

y06*lncepmm It is an interaction variable that will permit us to asses how the impact of

campaign expenditures on electoral outcomes has changed since the election

of 2000.

y06*female Interaction variable that measures the evolution of the impact of having at

least one woman in a SDC on vote.

amexunem*govparty This interactive variable will give us the opportunity to measure the impact

that state unemployment rate has on the electoral result of a particular SDC

if the governor is of its same party.





The data we are going to analyze show the characteristics of and independent pool of

observations across time. The senatorial dual candidacies represent different individuals, although the

parties are the same. So, we will rely on Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) methodology, together with

dummy variables in order to make all the estimations of the econometric model of interest.

We do not expect any particular sign of the year dummy, so this result will be obtained

empirically. Certainly, the expected sign of lncepmm is positive. We believe that higher levels of

expenditures are associated with better electoral results. It would be interesting to see how the impact

of campaign expenditures has evolved since 2000. We believe that the coefficient on female will have a

negative coefficient, since Mexico has characterized by being a “machista” country, it is extremely

difficult that a woman win an election; moreover, being a woman could produce a negative effect on

voting. We will also asses how this gender effect on voting has evolved in those six years. If a Mexican

state experiment a high unemployment rate, and if the governor is of the same party of the SDC, the

economic fact will affect the electoral performance of the SDC, in which case the sign of the joint

variable of amexunem*govparty would be negative; something different will happen if the population is

not sensitive to economic conditions. So, we are not sure about the sign of this coefficient. Certainly, a

positive coefficient on govparty will indicate that the governor of a particular party has made his job

well, and this will affect positively the electoral results for his own party SDCs. If the governor of the

same party of the SDC did badly in his position, this could lead to a reduction in the vote that SDCcould receive. We expect that participation of a SDC in a coalition will bring it more votes than if it

runs alone, so the expected coefficient could be positive. The signs of pastsen and presparty will

depend on the people’s perception about their current authorities, such as the senators and president of

the republic. The sign of those coefficients have to be determined by the estimation of our model.

4. DATA SOURCES AND CHARACTERISTICS OF THE SAMPLE

This section requires us to give a brief explanation of the political rules that apply in the case of

senate elections in Mexico. There are 32 states in the country, and each state is represented by a couple

of senators that run together to win an election. That is why we have called our observations or

subjects Senatorial Dual Candidacies (SDC). Thus, each of the parties registered to compete in the

elections can present two senate candidates by each state. In our case, we have selected the three most





important Mexican parties, which are: the National Action Party (PAN), the Institutional Revolutionary

Party (PRI), and the Revolutionary Democratic Party (PRD). In 2000 senate election, the PAN form a

coalition with other minor parties called Alianza por el Cambio (Alliance for the Change), and the PRD

run jointly with other parties in a coalition called Alianza por Mexico (Alliance for Mexico), the PRI run

alone. In the 2006 senate election, the PAN run alone, and PRI formed a coalition with the Green

Party called Alianza por Mexico, and the PRD form a coalition which name was Alianza por el Bien de

Todos (Alliance for People’s Wellbeing). We are focusing on them because they are the only parties that

have won senatorial seats in the polls; with this we mean they have won seats in the senate for majority

of votes. This is important because the Mexican law, based on the principles of political fairness and

pluralism, assigns senatorial seats to minor parties which have not won any in the polls.

In total, we have a sample 192 observations to be analyzed. 96 SDCs for the year 2000, 32 by

each of the three main political parties; and the same number we have for the election of 2006.

We have gathered data on electoral outcomes from the web page of the Instituto Federal Electoral

(Federal Electoral Institute), which is the agency that organizes and rules the federal elections in

Mexico: http://www.ife.org.mx/portal/site/ife/menuitem.918360bce8aa6a3e2b2e8170241000a0/. Campaign

expenditures data were taken of these two IFE links -for 2000 and 2006 respectively:

http://www.ife.org.mx/portal/site/ife/menuitem.999d3f002b7e5d94758dc7ff100000f7/

http://www.ife.org.mx/portal/site/ife/menuitem.274f189c0c99f8f8b8fd0070241000a0/?vgnextoid=4d4b1fa1c91ea010Vgn

VCM1000002c01000aRCRD.

To determine females in SDCs, coalition, and previous period senators, we looked at the

following IFE web links -for 2000 and 2006:

http://www.ife.org.mx/portal/site/ife/menuitem.274f189c0c99f8f8b8fd0070241000a0/?vgnextoid=dc4c1fa1c91ea010Vgn

VCM1000002c01000aRCRD.

http://www.ife.org.mx/portal/site/ife/menuitem.4a502d5cc35af163758dc7ff100000f7/portal/site/ife/menuitem.3a3c5711

623e293f8e0b3696100000f7#2000.

Data on the variable of governor party were obtained from the web page http://www.mexico-

tenoch.com/enmarca.php?de=http://www.mexico-tenoch.com/gobernadores/bajasur/BAJASUR.html. Data on

regions and state unemployment rates were obtained from the web page of the Instituto Nacional de

Estadística Geografía e Informática (National Institute of Computation, Geography and Statistics)

www.inegi.gob.mx.





5. RESULTS OF ESTIMATED MODELS.

In this section we present the results we have obtained from regressing our original equation. In

table 2 we can see the estimated coefficients, standard errors and t-statistics. Let’s examine in more

detail the implications of our model.

TABLE 2. OLS POOLING INDEPENDENT CROSS SECTION

Source | SS df MS Number of obs = 192

-------------+------------------------------ F( 12, 179) = 11.43

Model | 12704.8707 12 1058.73922 Prob > F = 0.0000

Residual | 16575.7427 179 92.6019145 R-squared = 0.4339

-------------+------------------------------ Adj R-squared = 0.3959

Total | 29280.6134 191 153.301641 Root MSE = 9.623

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

pvote | Coef. Std. Err. t P>|t| [95% Conf. Interval]

-------------+----------------------------------------------------------------

y06 | 21.60975 22.96708 0.94 0.348 -23.71132 66.93081

lncepmm | 36.65373 13.1251 2.79 0.006 10.7539 62.55355

lncepmmsq | -1.162132 .4656868 -2.50 0.013 -2.081075 -.2431901

female | -4.225698 2.143412 -1.97 0.050 -8.455304 .0039074

amexunem | -.5723994 1.777993 -0.32 0.748 -4.080922 2.936124

govparty | 8.676838 2.33157 3.72 0.000 4.075939 13.27774

pastsen | 1.414255 2.216176 0.64 0.524 -2.958938 5.787447

presparty | (dropped)

coalition | -2.797666 2.268467 -1.23 0.219 -7.274045 1.678713

north | -.5070283 1.61109 -0.31 0.753 -3.6862 2.672144

y06female | .6555306 3.010481 0.22 0.828 -5.285067 6.596128y06lncepmm | -1.636741 1.557873 -1.05 0.295 -4.710901 1.437418

amexunemgo~y | 1.031417 3.041296 0.34 0.735 -4.969989 7.032824

_cons | -253.0498 91.78379 -2.76 0.006 -434.1672 -71.93234

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Breusch-Pagan / Cook-Weisberg test for heteroskedasticity

Ho: Constant variance

Variables: fitted values of pvote

chi2(1) = 3.90

Prob > chi2 = 0.0482

We obtained unsatisfactory results. As is apparent, the year dummy variable y06 , the

coefficients on amexunem, pastsen, coalition, north, y06female, y06lncepmm, and

anexunemgovparty are not statistically significant at any reasonable level. So, this seems to be that

those key variables to run an OLS pooled independent model are not useful in this context. They do





not have predictive power. On the other hand, we observe that coefficients on lncepmm and

lncepmmsq, govparty, and female are highly statistically significant at the 95% level, though female

is just marginally significant. Definitely, campaign expenditures on propaganda and mass media give

predictive power to the model, the same happens when a governor is a member of the same party of

the SDC. The variable presparty was dropped by the model, so we will see what can we do with it,

once we run a test of joint significance. The R-squared of 0.43 tells us that 43% of the variation in

percentage vote is explained by the model, which is not a trivial goodness-of-fit measure. The F-

statistic is somewhat high, indicating the overall significance of the full set of independent variables.

When we run a Breusch-Pagan test for nonconstant variance, we see that we marginally reject the Ho,

indicating the presence of nonconstant variance.

Before we proceed with further interpretations of the sign and magnitude of the coefficients, it

would be reasonable to test the significance of the full set of variables that result in low t-statistic

values. We have obtained an F-statistic of 1.39 (with 7 degrees of freedom in the numerator and 179 in

the denominator). So, we strongly reject the null hypothesis that those variables are important for this

model. We can drop those predictors in order to have better estimates. Unfortunately, this does not

permit us to prove some of our thoughts and hypotheses.

Now, let us rerun our model, but without those seven insignificant variables. Here is the

estimated equation.

TABLE 3. OLS POOLING INDEPENDENT CROSS SECTION WITHOUT 7 VARIABLES

Source | SS df MS Number of obs = 192

-------------+------------------------------ F( 6, 185) = 23.03

Model | 12517.8158 6 2086.30263 Prob > F = 0.0000

Residual | 16762.7976 185 90.6097168 R-squared = 0.4275

-------------+------------------------------ Adj R-squared = 0.4089

Total | 29280.6134 191 153.301641 Root MSE = 9.5189

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

pvote | Coef. Std. Err. t P>|t| [95% Conf. Interval]

-------------+----------------------------------------------------------------

y06 | -2.01897 1.445804 -1.40 0.164 -4.871353 .8334124lncepmm | 36.53519 12.71481 2.87 0.005 11.45052 61.61986

lncepmmsq | -1.180149 .4474099 -2.64 0.009 -2.062831 -.2974675

female | -3.546034 1.46697 -2.42 0.017 -6.440175 -.651892

govparty | 9.847189 1.558935 6.32 0.000 6.771612 12.92277

presparty | 4.593214 1.633198 2.81 0.005 1.371127 7.815301

_cons | -251.3556 89.86463 -2.80 0.006 -428.6468 -74.06438

------------------------------------------------------------------------------





Now we have improved results. All our coefficients are highly statistically significant, with the

exception of y06. Moreover, the R-squared has increase. Let us apply a Breusch Pagan test to detec

the presence of heteroskedasticity.

Breusch-Pagan / Cook-Weisberg test for heteroskedasticity

Ho: Constant variance

Variables: fitted values of pvote

chi2(1) = 5.42

Prob > chi2 = 0.0199

As is seen, the test suggests the presence of nonconstant variance in the model. In order to

have robust and consistent estimates, let us run a WLS model. This is the result.

TABLE 4. WLS ESTIMATED MODEL

Linear regression Number of obs = 192

F( 6, 185) = 27.18

Prob > F = 0.0000

R-squared = 0.4275

Root MSE = 9.5189

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

| Robustpvote | Coef. Std. Err. t P>|t| [95% Conf. Interval]

-------------+----------------------------------------------------------------

y06 | -2.01897 1.468277 -1.38 0.171 -4.91569 .8777498

lncepmm | 36.53519 11.73666 3.11 0.002 13.38028 59.6901

lncepmmsq | -1.180149 .4117569 -2.87 0.005 -1.992492 -.3678063

female | -3.546034 1.459299 -2.43 0.016 -6.425042 -.6670254

govparty | 9.847189 1.358564 7.25 0.000 7.166918 12.52746

presparty | 4.593214 1.592325 2.88 0.004 1.451763 7.734664

_cons | -251.3556 82.95614 -3.03 0.003 -415.0173 -87.69393

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The results are now much better than the other past estimated models. The size of coefficients

did not change too much. But, we have robust estimates, and higher t-values. The interpretation of the

coefficients is as follows: a one percent increase in campaign expenditures on propaganda and mass

media is associated with an increase in 0.36 percentage points in the total vote. On the other hand, one

interesting result of this estimation is that campaign expenditures observe decreasing returns. So, there

is one point in which it does not matter how much a SDC spends, it will not have a satisfactory result,





or even will worsen. The coefficient female tells us that if as SDC has at least one woman, the

percentage votes a SDC receives will decrease by 3.54%, which is an important reduction. The most

interesting of all coefficients, is that of the govparty, this coefficient implies that when the governor of

a state is of the same party that a particular SDC, this will generate roughly 10% more votes for that

SDC. This gives us an idea of the power that a governor has in determining the result of an election.

Finally, the coefficient in presparty tells us that if the president of the Republic is the same as that of

the SDC the percentage vote received by a SDC will improve in 4.5%.

CONCLUSIONS





1. Our final WLS estimated model let campaign expenditures as the most important

predictor, as it was expected. It also strengthens the importance of the governor and the

president in the electoral processes of Mexico, especially in the run to the Senate.

2. We have proved our hypothesis about discrimination against women in a political

process. A senatorial dual candidacy with at least one woman obtains fewer votes than

other form by two men. This difference is highly statistically significant.

3. We weren’t able to determine the impact of the regions in the election, because it did not

give predictive power to the model.

4. Our results do not differ too much to that obtained by our theoretical reference, and it

reinforces the general believe that the most a SDC spends, the higher the probability of

obtaining more votes in an election.

5. It is interesting to see the magnitude of the coefficients of govparty and presparty. Now,

in a Mexico without the PRI in the president, the governors and presidents impose their

political power in order to give more votes to its co-party members that run for a senate

chair.

6. In summary, our model does not go beyond previous beliefs or discussions about

electoral matters. But, the most important discovery in our study is that campaign

expenditures tend to be maximized, and after any other financial effort will not give

more votes to a SDC.

REFERENCES




Juan C Benavides & Vicente A Rivera16

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Evidence. American Political Science Review , 94, 596-609

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