Political Advertising and the Electoral College

In U.S. presidential elections, the winner-take-all allocation of states’ electoral votes distorts candidates’ incentives and leads them to allocate their resources to a handful of battleground states.  The disproportionate attention these states receive—for example, in political advertising—gives a minority of voters significant influence. We estimate a model of advertising competition between candidates to assess how equilibrium allocations would change under a direct popular vote. Candidates in our model strategically allocate advertising across markets while facing uncertainty about market-specific shocks that shift voters’ choices on electionday. After estimating the model using data on votes and advertising in 2000 and 2004, we evaluate a series of counterfactuals to understand how the advertising choices and election outcomes change under the alternative election mechanism. Under a direct popular vote, every market receives positive advertising and per-capita advertising exposures are spread more equitably across states. This leads to an increase in nationwide turnout of nearly 1.7 million voters, which is particularly relevant to states because their influence in the election is now proportional to their turnout instead of their electoral votes.