Advertising Effects in Presidential Elections

Authors:
Brett R. Gordon;Wesley R. Hartmann
Affiliations:
Columbia Business School, Columbia University, New York, New York 10027;Stanford Graduate School of Business, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305
Venue:
Marketing Science
Year:
2013

Citing 5
Cited 1

Endogeneity in Brand Choice Models

Management Science
Planning Media Schedules in the Presence of Dynamic Advertising Quality

Marketing Science
Differences in Dynamic Brand Competition Across Markets: An Empirical Analysis

Marketing Science
Campaign Spending Limits and Political Advertising

Management Science
Heterogeneous Learning and the Targeting of Marketing Communication for New Products

Marketing Science

The Dynamic Advertising Effect of Collegiate Athletics

Marketing Science

Quantified Score

Hi-index	0.00

Visualization

Abstract

Presidential elections provide both an important context in which to study advertising and a setting that mitigates the challenges of dynamics and endogeneity. We use the 2000 and 2004 general elections to analyze the effect of market-level advertising on county-level vote shares. The results indicate significant positive effects of advertising exposures. Both instrumental variables and fixed effects alter the ad coefficient. Advertising elasticities are smaller than are typical for branded goods yet significant enough to shift election outcomes. For example, if advertising were set to zero and all other factors held constant, three states' electoral votes would have changed parties in 2000. Given the narrow margin of victory in 2000, this shift would have resulted in a different president.