Which Citizens Do Elected Officials Target With Distributive Spending? A Survey Experiment on U.S. Municipal Officials

• Author: Adam M. Dynes
• Published date: 01 September 2020
• Date: 01 September 2020
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/1532673X20921372
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/1532673X20921372

American Politics Research

2020, Vol. 48(5) 579 –595

© The Author(s) 2020

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DOI: 10.1177/1532673X20921372

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Article

The central premise of distributive politics is that politicians

target citizens with public spending to improve their elec-

toral prospects. But given that politicians do not have unlim-

ited access to such distributive goods, which types of

citizens do they target? Do they focus their efforts on core

supporters, those whose support for the politician is already

the strongest? Or do they use distributive spending to try to

woo swing voters, those whose loyalties are unclear? If poli-

ticians believe they can count on the support of their core

voters, then the obvious vote-maximizing strategy is to tar-

get swing voters (Lindbeck & Weibull, 1987). However, if

politicians are risk averse and uncertain as to how distribu-

tive spending will affect swing voters’ electoral behavior,

targeting core voters may be their safest bet (Cox &

McCubbins, 1986).

A complicating factor for a candidate deciding whether to

target core or swing voters is whether these citizens will

actually turn out to vote. If distributive goods only buy sup-

port and do not affect turnout, then politicians should target

citizens who are more likely to vote to minimize wasting

effort on nonvoters. However, if politicians believe that dis-

tributive spending has a mobilizing effect (Chen, 2013; De

La O, 2013; Matsubayashi & Jun-Deh, 2012), then they have

an additional incentive to target core supporters, particularly

core supporters who are less likely to turn out but have the

potential to do so if mobilized (Nichter, 2008).

The existing literature does not provide a clear answer to

these questions. Foundational theories make contradictory

predictions, while empirical results are mixed and rely on

research designs that are unable to identify intended target-

ing strategies from observable budget allocations.

It is on this latter point that I hope to contribute to this lit-

erature. To do so, I use a novel approach for the study of legis-

lative behavior: a survey experiment on elected municipal

officials from across the United States. This approach directly

measures the perceptions of the population of interest and pro-

vides causal evidence of politicians’ strategic decision-mak-

ing. In the survey experiment, respondents read a vignette

about a city councilor who must decide which of the two

neighborhoods to target with a local road repair project.

Respondents only know how the neighborhoods differ in

terms of two factors that are randomized across neighbor-

hoods: (a) the neighborhood’s support for the incumbent and

(b) its residents’ turnout propensity. The respondents are

instructed to advise the city councilor on which neighborhood

to target. In a follow-up experiment, respondents predict what

921372APRXXX10.1177/1532673X20921372American Politics ResearchDynes

research-article2020

1Brigham Young University, Provo, UT, USA

Corresponding Author:

Adam M. Dynes, Assistant Professor of Political Science, Brigham Young

University, 745 Kimball Tower, Provo, UT 84602, USA.

Email: adamdynes@byu.edu

Which Citizens Do Elected Officials

Target With Distributive Spending?

A Survey Experiment on U.S.

Municipal Officials

Adam M. Dynes1

Abstract

Research is mixed as to whether politicians target swing voters or core supporters with distributive spending and whether

citizens’ turnout affects this strategy. I use a novel data set and research design to examine this—a survey experiment on

elected municipal officials. Respondents indicated which of two neighborhoods to target with a local project. I find that local

officials, on average, target swing neighborhoods over core ones because they believe that swing voters are more likely than

core voters to electorally punish politicians for targeting other groups. Yet, a large proportion still target core voters but

not for reasons consistent with extant theory. Officials generally target high turnout neighborhoods over low turnout ones

but under certain conditions are also willing to target lower turnout citizens. These findings point to the need for ongoing

work to identify the conditions under which officials will target core or swing voters.

Keywords

distributive politics, local politics, survey experiment

580 American Politics Research 48(5)

the electoral ramifications would be if the city councilor chose

one of the neighborhoods over the other. This setup allows for

an analysis of which types of voters policymakers believe are

the most electorally advantageous to target and why.

Overall, I find that policymakers target swing neighbor-

hoods over core ones and high turnout neighborhoods over

lower turnout ones. Although policymakers believe that dis-

tributive spending is a net benefit for an incumbent, regard-

less of which neighborhood is chosen, they target the swing

neighborhood over the core one because they believe that

swing voters, relative to core voters, are much more likely to

electorally punish incumbents for directing spending to other

groups. In short, policymakers believe they can take the sup-

port of core voters for granted. At the same time, support for

this swing voter strategy is not overwhelming. Nearly 43%

of respondents still targeted core supporters over swing vot-

ers, suggesting that current theory, which often argues for

one targeting strategy, is not sufficient for explaining elected

officials’ behavior and perceptions on this front.

With regard to turnout, I find that local policymakers over-

whelmingly believe that targeting citizens who have a high

propensity to vote over those with a low chance of doing so is

the vote-maximizing strategy. In addition, policymakers are

uncertain as to whether the distributive spending will boost

turnout in the targeted neighborhood. As such, they would

rather target certain voters than risk wasting distributive

goods on an attempt to mobilize those with a lower propen-

sity to turnout. Although officials favor targeting swing over

core and high turnout over low turnout, the interaction of vot-

ers’ turnout and support has some effect on policymakers’

targeting strategy. All else equal, officials are slightly more

likely to target a neighborhood if it consists of high turnout

swing voters or low turnout core voters. In a second study

where the turnout between citizens is not as drastic, I find that

officials favor the higher turnout residents when choosing

between swing voters but favor the lower turnout residents

when choosing between core supporters. Thus, the size of the

difference in turnout affects the extent to which officials con-

sider the interaction of constituents’ support and turnout.

This article makes several contributions to the distributive

politics literature. The first is its use of a novel data set and

research design to help adjudicate between competing theo-

ries on an important question in distributive politics. The

responses are from actual elected officials who make distribu-

tive choices in the real world and whose motivations are in

line with relevant theory. Second, the analysis not only mea-

sures whom politicians would target but also examines why

they would target one type of citizen over another. I primarily

focus on respondents’ choice between core and swing voters

and fail to find evidence supporting the assumptions underly-

ing Cox and McCubbins’ (1986) core voter model. This sug-

gests that conditional theories (e.g., Fleck, 1999; Hirano

et al., 2009) might provide a better explanation of why some

policymakers believe targeting core voters is more electorally

advantageous. Third, the finding that high turnout voters are

rewarded for their participation (see also Martin, 2003) has

potentially negative implications for representation at the

local level, given the skew in who participates in local elec-

tions (Anzia, 2013; although see Oliver et al., 2012).

Whom Should Policymakers Target

and Why?

In this section, I lay out the main predictions of the theories

between which this article helps adjudicate. I begin with the

swing voter models. In these models (e.g., Dixit & Londregan,

19961; Lindbeck & Weibull, 1987; but see Stokes, 2005 for a

slight alternative), citizens’ support or ideology is conceptual-

ized as their affinity for two opposing candidates in an open-seat

race independent of any distributive promises made by either

candidate. Candidates are assumed to have no chance of win-

ning over their opponents’ supporters, so they have to decide

whether to target a group of their core voters (i.e., citizens who

ideologically favor the candidate over the other one) or a group

of swing voters (i.e., citizens who are ideologically indifferent

between the two candidates). The prediction that politicians will

target swing over core stems from the argument that core voters

“cannot credibly threaten to punish their favored party if it with-

holds rewards,” but swing voters can. Thus, politicians “should

not waste rewards on” their core supporters (Stokes, 2005,

p. 317). These models make the following hypotheses:

Hypothesis 1 (H1): Target Swing Voters: All else equal,

policymakers prefer to allocate distributive benefits to

swing voters over core voters.

Hypothesis 1.1 (H1.1): Loyal Core Voters: Policymakers

believe that core voters will punish them less than swing

voters for targeting benefits to other voters.

Others (Cox et al., 1984; Cox & McCubbins, 1986) argue

that policymakers actually have a stronger incentive to target

core voters over swing voters, given the following two

assumptions: (a) politicians are risk averse and (b) citizens’

support for the candidate correlates with the politicians’ famil-

iarity with those citizens. In this framework, core voters are

“well-known quantities” to the candidate and have consis-

tently supported her in the past (Cox & McCubbins, 1986, p.

378). She knows how they will react to the allocation of dis-

tributive goods. Swing voters, on the other hand, are less

familiar or “unattached” to either candidate. They make for

“riskier investments” both because the politician is uncertain

how distributive benefits will affect swing voters’ electoral

behavior and because swing voters may be targeted by the

other candidate. As such, risk-averse politicians will “over-

invest” in core voters. This leads to the following hypotheses:

Hypothesis 2 (H2): Target Core Voters: All else equal,

policymakers prefer to allocate distributive benefits to

core voters over swing voters.