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In the next section, I detail the expected effects of campaign expenditures and votes in
more depth.
3. Effects of Own Expenditures and Rival Expenditures
To understand the relationship between expenditures and votes in Japan’s Lower
House, I extend some of the theoretical underpinnings based on studies of Japan’s
previous electoral system to the current one. In the former system, politicians spent
considerable sums of money in competition with same-party and other-party candidates.
In a study of Japan’s Lower House campaign-period spending practices from 1967-1990,
Cox and Thies (2000) show that LDP candidates’ own spending always had a positive
impact on the vote share. All of the “own spending” effects were statistically significant
except for the 1990 figures.
In terms of the spending effects from other parties, Cox and Thies find that the
impact is negative in all but two years and insignificant in all years. They claim their
negative finding supports what was believed about Japan’s previous multi-district system:
“…This is consistent with the conventional wisdom that other parties’ candidates do not
(for the most part) compete for the same votes that conservatives do” (Cox and Thies
2000:50). In the new single-member districts, these “own spending” and “other parties’
spending” effects should also be reflected in the amounts of votes received by candidates.
In Japan’s new electoral system, own spending effects on votes can be examined
using the amounts of expenditures reported by candidates during the official campaign
and during the year-based period. Likewise, one means to estimate the pull of other
Convention