It Takes Money to Make MPs: Evidence from 160 Years of British Campaign Spending

• 成果类型: Article; Early Access
• 署名作者: Centre for Economic Policy Research - UK; University of Oxford
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC HISTORY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-0507
• DOI: 10.1017/S0022050725100934
• 发表日期: 2025
• 页码: -
• 关键词: election outcomes; finance; IMPACT; television; incumbent; media; VOTE; mail

摘要

We study electoral campaigns over the long run, through the lens of their spending. We build a novel, exhaustive dataset on U.K. general elections from 1857 to 2017. We provide quantitative insights on the history of campaigns, including the shift away from paid staff toward advertising. We then show that the correlation between candidate spending and votes has strongly increased since the 1880s, peaking in the last quarter of the twentieth century. We link this pattern to the introduction of new information technologies-in particular, local radio and the Internet-and to the transformations of campaign strategies.