Footnote:
Nach Informationen von SSRN wurde die ursprüngliche Fassung des Dokuments August 20, 2009 erstellt
Description:
The empirical relationship between party organizational strength and electoral outcomes has important implications for our understanding of democratic political systems, as well as practical implications for party officials. I explore this relationship using fundraising from private sources as a measure of state party organizational strength, and electoral outcomes for state legislature in 43 states during the 2002-2008 election cycles. I find that contributions to state party committees both affect seats won in elections for state legislature and are affected by the share of seats currently held. Simulations show that various exogenous events that might improve the fortunes of a state party have different short and longer term consequences for both contributions and seat shares. The most cost-effective tactic for improving the fortunes of a minority party is likely to be recruiting a single, attractive candidate for statewide office