UNM professor talks campaign spending & congressional races

Meet Michael Rocca, an associate professor in Political Science and the director of the Master of Public Policy Program, at The University of New Mexico. Rocca's work has appeared in The Journal of Politics, the Forum, Politics, Groups and Identities, Political Research Quarterly, and much more. He is a two-time recipient of the College of Arts and Sciences Teaching Excellent Award and a recipient of UNM's Inaugural Digital Literacy Innovation Award.

1. How much money will each presidential candidate spend ahead of this year's election?

"It's going to be a lot of money. We have seen a significant rise in spending by presidential candidates and congressional candidates over the last 10,15, 20 years, with an explosion over the last two or three election cycles. 2016 or 2020 the number was around $16 billion between congressional and presidential elections. And I think the presidential election in total was around maybe 8 or 9 billion."

2. Where is the campaign money coming from?

"The money is essentially coming from two or three different sources. The first source is a bunch of small donors, who are maybe middle-class families giving to their preferred candidate less than $200, and there are a lot of individual contributors who do that. On the other hand, most of that money is coming from a small portion of very large donors, so these are wealthy individuals contributing a lot of money to individual candidate campaigns. But then also, after Citizens United, that important ruling from the Supreme Court in 2010, they can give as much money as they want to independent expenditure groups like Super PACs. These days money is coming from a large number of small donors, a small number of large donors, and then also from outside spending groups."

3. Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission?

"It was a landmark ruling that fundamentally changed the way election spending works. It happened in 2010, when the Supreme Court decided in Citizens United, First Amendment right for corporations to spend as much money as they want in federal elections, and that unleashed a whole bunch of money in a variety of different ways. The most important way and according to my own research, corporations aren't the ones doing it. It's actually coming now from individual donors who are giving money to Super PACs and these Super PACs were a function of the Citizens United ruling. What that ruling essentially says is that spending money in an election is an expression of our freedom of speech and corporations are a bunch of individuals, labor unions are a bunch of individuals, so they have the same freedom of speech rights that individuals like you and I do. Of course, what resulted was individuals creating groups that then aggregate all of this funding, and as long as they remain independent from candidates, they can do whatever they want with that money."

4. What are candidates spending the most money on?

"About 60 percent of all that money is going to media, and most of that media money is going to TV ads. TV ads are really expensive right now, particularly as you get closer and closer to the election. Also, imagine how expensive an ad would be during prime time, let's say in October. As TV and media costs increase, campaign costs increase as a result, so a vast majority of that spending will be spent on media. The other part of that spending will be spent on administrative costs, pamphlets, door knockers, staff, salaries."

5. Can more campaign spending impact the outcome of an election?

"It can, it's really easy for the public to see the amount of money and argue that a candidate wins because of that. It's usually the candidate who's raising the most amount of money, is usually the more viable, the more competitive candidate, so it's the reverse. I'll give you an example, incumbents in the U.S. Congress or even here in the state legislature in Santa Fe, typically raise much more money than the challenger does. The amount of money they are raising doesn't necessarily equate to an election victory, all the market is telling them and telling us is that they're raising more money because the market has already determined they are the likely winner. I would argue the American public typically gets the casual error wrong there, they're not winning because they're raising and spending more money, but they are raising and spending more money because the market, the public, and organized groups, believe they are going to win so they want to get something out of it when they eventually win office. Having said that, when you have as competitive an electoral environment as you have particularly at the federal level, any little bit of money, any extra money, that a campaign might spend on one or two additional TV ads, if you could get one or two more votes because of that, that might be the difference. That one or two votes, you multiply that by maybe 100, realistically if 1000 people see one more ad, then they would have otherwise, had that money not been there, that could be the difference in a toss-up competitive election when you're talking about elections so evenly divided as we got from Washington DC all the way down to Santa Fe, even here in Albuquerque."

6. Voting trends this year?

"There's very little split ticket voting these days, so when a democrat or republican shows up to the poll, they're usually just punching the ticket or pushing the button, democrats straight down the line. But now what you're seeing is a lot of Americans all across the country are polling in a way that suggests they're voting for one candidate at the presidential level and another at the congressional level. maybe President Trump at the presidential level and then the democratic member of Congress, their incumbent, at the state level. We haven't seen that in a long time."

7. How competitive are the New Mexico congressional races this year compared to other years?

"I would say it's status quo, the exact same. Congressional Districts one and three continue to lean democratic and based on what the market is telling me from campaign fundraising and polls, it's probably not going to be all that competitive. The incumbents will probably win pretty-handedly. And then also, consistent with the status quo, the second congressional district in southern New Mexico is going to be competitive, if not one of the most competitive races in the entire country again."

8. Could the previous NM Republican Party Lawsuit play a role in this election?

"It will definitely be a political issue, we will probably hear a lot about it during the campaign, about how the lines were drawn in a way to advantage the democrats. I know for a fact that ex-congresswoman Herrell has already talked about it. I would argue and expect that the district, even though it became slightly more democratic, is still going to be competitive. The reason I say that is because it's going to be a story about turnout."

9. What are the local issues congressional candidates are targeting?

"Water, climate change, immigration, healthcare, crime, abortion, education, and of course, always the most important one on the list is the economy. You're going to hear a lot about inflation, and on the other side, you'll hear a lot about economic growth and opportunity and employment, so those things are working in different directions, right now. The stock market increases, so you're going to hear very different messages from both sides. We're already hearing it from both sides of the aisle when it comes to how to interpret all of this economic data."

10. What role is the media playing in the congressional campaigns?

"That's a hotly debated topic in American politics research and has been for a really long time. There are two ways to think about this. The media matters as long as the messages are received. Most Americans that I alluded to earlier are not watching the news and they are fast-forwarding through ads or they're watching programs that don't have television ads. Let's say all you have is Netflix, then you're not picking up any messaging from the traditional television. One argument and a clear finding in literature are that the media does not have as much of an effect on public opinion on elections as the average American assumes it to have because the average American is not watching the news or paying attention to television ads. However, the flip side of that, let's say an independent, inattentive, relatively uninformed voter or non-voter, does see a message they are much more susceptible to that message than to someone who is already paying attention."

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