How do campaigns matter?

GC Jacobson�- Annual Review of Political Science, 2015 - annualreviews.org
A review of the evidence leaves no doubt election campaigns do matter in a variety of
important ways. The serious questions concern when, where, why, how, for what, and for
whom they matter. This essay reviews a selection of high-quality studies that address these
questions, focusing on several distinct lines of research that have been particularly
productive in recent years: on the effects of events and advertising in presidential elections;
on the effects of campaign spending in elections for down-ballot offices; on the effects of�…