Democrat Wins NY 26th District Special Election - Voters Uphold the Law of Diminishing Returns

And Conventional Wisdom in Campaigns is Proven Wrong – Again.

In a surprise upset, (although not too much of a surprise since the outcome matched late polls) Democrat Kathy Hocul won the heavily Republican New York 26^th Congressional seat in a special election held to replace Rep. Chris Lee who resigned after baring his chest in e-mails to potential women admirers.

Background

The 26^th Congressional District is a largely rural/small town area that includes suburbs of Buffalo and Rochester and the area in-between.  It has been a bastion of Republicans for a long time, and after Mr. Lee resigned it was considered safe for Republicans and not a particularly noteworthy election.  Two things changed that.

1. Jack Davis, a multi-millionaire who had previously run as a single issue Democrat, anti-free trade, tried to get the Republican nomination, failed, and entered the race as a self-described Tea Party Candidate.

2. The Ryan Plan for replacing Medicare with a Premium Subsidy program passed the House and was endorsed by the Republican Candidate.

Conventional Campaign Wisdom

The Republican strategy started with the conventional wisdom that in a two person race the Republican would win easily, and that the third party candidate was drawing almost all of his support from the Republican.  Thus the Republican campaign focuses early on negative advertising against the third party candidate, expecting that his support would drop and the votes would move to the Republican.

This strategy partly worked.  Support for Mr. Davis declined, although it probably would have done so in the absence of attacks by the Republican Ms. Corwin because third party support almost always drops as a close election nears (Senator Crist anyone?) and because Mr. Davis turned out to be a candidate in the Carl Palindo mode.

However the strategy failed because in a rare display of voter rationality, the electorate was turned off by the highly negative ads.  Mr. Davis’s support declined, but negative perceptions of Ms. Corwin increased.  Consequently the voters turned to Ms. Hochul and she gained a lead in the polls she never relinquished.  Ms. Corwin recognized this in her concession speech where she decried the negative aspect of the campaign, although she did not note that her campaign was the source of most of it.

Voters say they dislike negative campaigning, but conventional wisdom says negative campaigns win.  Not this time.

Diminishing Returns on Campaign Ads and Outsiders

The Law of Diminishing Returns states that as you do more and more of something, the incremental benefit gets smaller and smaller, and may turn negative.  In this election this applied to campaign ads, many millions of dollars were spent on ads by the Republicans, yet at the end of the campaign the Republican’s negatives were much higher than here positives! The huge amount of money was spent by the Republican candidate and by outside groups like Karl Rove’s.  However, the Law of Diminishing Returns says that the benefit from each additional ad declines, and in this case it may have been negative, turning the approval of the Republican sharply negative. 

This is a huge win for the idea that maybe unlimited financing cannot buy elections.  That after a point the extra spending does no good and maybe even harms a candidacy.  It also helps to recognize that strategies in the past may not work forever.  (Note to Mr. Rove:  Nancy Pelosi is no longer Speaker of the House, and voters know that).

The Republican royalty campaigned for the Republican candidate, including the Speaker of the House.  Voters in western New York are pretty independent.  They do not like outsiders coming in and telling them how to vote.  Political celebrities had no impact on the race, and the more they came the less the benefit. 

That Law of Diminishing Returns is pretty powerful stuff.

The Role of Medicare

After the Ryan Plan passed the House with very little Republican dissent, for reasons unknown to most the Republican candidate stated her strong support for the Plan.  Now despite what Republicans say, the Plan does end Medicare as it is today and replaces it with subsidized private insurance.  This is not popular, which should not have come as a surprise.

It did surprise Ms. Corwin and her Republican supporters.  Furthermore, instead of addressing the issue the Republican campaign tried to portray the Democrat as one who would end or destroy Medicare, which even if it were true (it wasn't) was just not credible.  Voters may not be all that bright, but they are not that stupid and the strategy just strengthened the issue for the Democrat because it portrayed the Republican as desperate.

Conclusions

Ms. Corwin, the Republican,  was an attractive candidate, she was not strongly attacked by the Buffalo News, a left of center paper, she had a personal fortune which she spent on the campaign, she had won an Assembly seat and so was an experienced campaigner, she had support from the Republican leadership and a huge amount of outside money came into the campaign.

She lost, because issues trumped spending and because you can sometimes spend too much and because many times Conventional Wisdom is wrong.  And she lost because ending Medicare, one of the most popular government programs ever to exist, is just not a winning campaign strategy in many cases.