After I blogged last week that Money is no guarantee of political success, Kiwiblog then also carried out some analysis of Spending and Votes. I'm hoping to do some some further analysis of the correlation between votes and party expenditure in New Zealand, but in the meantime, here's some previous analysis I carried out on this subject. [Read more below]
In the recent New Zealand elections there does not appear to be a strong correlation between parties increasing their spending and their votes increasing. In fact the correlation is possibly the opposite. Analysis of votes and party expenditure suggests that spending greater amounts on election campaigns appears to simply raise the average cost per vote for the parties. For example, National increased its expenditure in 1999 by about 40 percent, but received fewer votes, which meant that its cost per vote rose from $2.80 to $4.35. Act has also achieved very bad value for money, spending $13.82 per vote in 1996, $5.41 per vote in 1999 and $12.36 per vote in 2002. Another party of the right, United New Zealand spent $7.81 per vote in 1996 and then $8.63 per vote in 1999. By contrast there are plenty of examples of parties finding success after spending only small amounts. For instance, in both 1990 and 1999 the Green Party spent only very small amounts for a significant return. In the later case, they achieved a cost per vote of only $2.62. The party then became wealthier and was able to more than double its expenditure at the following election, but this meant that the cost of each vote rose to $5.38. Similarly, New Zealand First has generally spent only small amounts on campaigning and has been relatively very successful. For the general elections between 1996 and 2002 it has achieved low costs per vote of $4.01, $2.46, and $2.15.
In New Zealand it is not always the party with the most money that wins. The 1993 election was the last contest in which the party with the most (non-state funded) money 'won' - in the elections of 1996, 1999, 2002 and 2005, the party that spent the most (non-state) money did not win the greatest amount of votes.
