Political observers are once again marveling at the prominence of self-financed candidates. Most notably, there was a debate recently over the extent to which Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, self-financed his primary campaign.1 And in Maryland, David Trone spent $12.7 million of his own money on his congressional campaign, a new record among U.S. House candidates, only to lose the Democratic primary.2 Meanwhile, in Texas, some believe self-financing a congressional campaign is increasingly the norm.3
In 2010, the National Institute on Money in State Politics analyzed 2000–2009 self-funded campaigns. Its report, “The Efficacy of Self-Funding a Political Campaign,” concluded that, “The traditional advantages of being the top fundraiser in a race, or being an incumbent, don't confer the same level of success to self-financiers.”4
Recent coverage of self-financed candidacies begs the question: do the findings of the Institute’s previous report still hold true? A review of campaign finance data from 2010 through 2015 reveals that little has changed. Eighty-eight percent of candidates who relied heavily on their own money lost during that period. These findings are consistent even with the ten candidates who invested the most, with only one prevailing in the general election. The only finding that stands out is the unusually large amount of self-funded campaign money in the 2010 election.
Methodology
The Institute collected and analyzed contributions to candidates who ran for state-level office from 2010 through 2015. Judicial candidates and candidates who raised less than $1,000 were omitted from the analysis to exclude atypical candidacies. The Institute defines “self financing” as any money provided to a candidate by himself or herself, and in those cases the Institute was able to identify, it may include contributions from an immediate family member, or a family trust. To identify cases of self-financing, the Institute examined all candidate contributions during this period and matched the surnames of candidates and contributors, and manually identified obvious self-financing transactions reported to the state.5 A “self-funded candidate” is defined as a candidate in which self-financing accounts for 51 percent or more of his or her campaign contribution total.
2010-2015: Money Still ≠ Success
Self-financing accounted for a mere 10 percent of the $6.7 billion raised altogether in direct contributions. Just over 3,000 of the 38,914 candidates examined—or 8 percent—were self-funded, down from 12 percent in earlier elections. And success was still evasive to these self-funded candidates: just twelve percent won, in line with the 11 percent observed in earlier elections.
The more candidates gave to their campaigns, the higher was their failure rate. Eighteen percent of candidates who financed 51-60 percent of their campaign total prevailed. This drops to 15 percent for those providing between 61 and 70 percent of their campaign funds. The decline is relatively consistent, falling all the way to 5 percent for candidates providing 91 percent or more of their campaign total.
Figure 1: Success Rate of Self-Funded State Candidates, 2010-2015
![SuccessSelfFunded](assets/Uploads/_resampled/ResizedImageWzYwMCw1OTld/SuccessSelfFunded.png)
Incumbents who self-funded their campaigns continued to enjoy a high success rate: 117 of 149 incumbents, or 78 percent, were reelected, compared to a 73 percent success rate seen in earlier years. Eleven percent of the 1,655 self-funded candidates running in open races won, while only four percent of the 1,228 self-funded candidates challenging incumbents prevailed. Only open-seat candidates did better than comparable candidates included in the 2000–2009 report, with success rates increasing by two percent.
Another trend held true from the previous analysis: the lack of a considerable partisan divide in success rates. Far more Republicans (1,648) self-funded their campaigns than did Democrats (1,040), but GOP candidates’ 13 percent success rate only slightly outpaces Democratic candidates’ 11 percent success rate. In the previous report, 12 percent of self-funded Republicans prevailed, compared to 11 percent of Democrats.
Among the top fundraisers in their respective elections, 51 percent of self-funded candidates won, down from the 55 percent success rate seen earlier.
Still Reaching for the Top
In pre-2010 elections, the Institute found that candidates running for governor were much more likely to be self-funded. This held true again, but the divide is even more pronounced: 21 percent of all 2010–2015 candidates running for governor were self-funded, while only 7 percent of all other candidates share the same classification.
The ten most-prolific self-funders all ran for governor and all but one lost, often by a large margin. Meg Whitman led the pack by a mile with $144.2 million of her own money in the 2010 California gubernatorial race. That was enough for Whitman to defeat Steve Poizner—the candidate with the third-largest self-funding total ($24.3 million)—in the Republican primary, but she lost to Democrat Jerry Brown by more than 1.3 million votes.6
Two candidates running in 2010 for governor of Connecticut were on this list, and only one had his name printed on the general election ballot. Ned Lamont gave himself $9.1 million, almost 95 percent of his campaign total, and he lost the Democratic primary by 16 percent.7 Tom Foley spent $10.9 million on his bid while raising only $1.6 million from other donors, and although he won the Republican primary with a plurality of the vote,8 he lost in the general election.9
Three other candidates on the list of top self-funders also failed in primary elections in 2010: Texas Democrat Farouk Shami spent $9.5 million, Republican Mark Neumann spent $5.8 million in Wisconsin, and Democrat Matt Entenza of Minnesota spent $5.4 million. Each of these candidates’ own largess accounted for 89 percent of his war chest.
For every rule there is an exception, and Rick Scott of Florida is the most obvious exception: In 2010, the Republican spent $60.3 million, 89 percent of his campaign total, and squeaked by with a 49 percent win on election night.10 In Illinois, GOP nominee Bruce Rauner contributed $37.5 million to his campaign in 2014 and won, but he is not classified as a self-funded candidate because this was only 42 percent of his total. Similarly, Democrat Tom Wolf spent $10 million—just over a quarter of his campaign total—on his successful 2014 gubernatorial race in Pennsylvania.
2010 Surge in Self-Financing
The big anomaly in this analysis is the surge in self-financing in the 2010 campaigns. Candidates gave over $400 million to their own campaigns that year or 62 percent of the 2010–2015 self-financing total. The 2010 elections saw big fundraising overall ($2.5 billion), but self-financing accounted for a solid 17 percent of that total. The share of self-financing in the ensuing years did not even come close to the 2010 percentage. In 2014, the next comparable election, candidate self-financing reached $153 million, only seven percent of the $2.2 billion raised altogether that year.
Self-funded candidates gave 87 percent of the 2010 self-financing total,11 which is considerably more than all other years. Self-funded candidates always gave at least half of the self-financing total, save for the 2014 election (38 percent), but their 2010 share was at least 13 percent larger than in each election year thereafter. It is, therefore, no surprise that nine of the ten most prolific self-funders ran in 2010, whereas the top-ten spenders in the 2000–2010 self financing report were scattered throughout that timeline.
Figure 2: Self-Funded Candidates’ Total Within Self-Financing Total, by Election Year, 2010-2015
![AmtOfSelfFundedWithin TotalbyYear10 15](assets/Uploads/_resampled/ResizedImageWzYwMCw1OTNd/AmtOfSelfFundedWithin-TotalbyYear10-15.png)
The 2010 spike in self-financing did not have a disproportionate impact on the overall success rate of 2010–2015 self-funded candidates, but self-funders in recent years have seen more success. Only 223 self-funded candidates prevailed in elections held in 2011 through 2015, which is 13 percent of the total. However, 16 percent of 2014 self-funders did prevail, as did 22 percent of 2015 self-funders.
Fazit
Prospective candidates who are considering a run for office on their own dime will not find much solace in the findings of this report. Although 22 percent of self-funded candidates prevailed in 2015, that amounts to only 13 candidates in an odd-year election. There is not enough evidence to suggest the trend is shifting in favor of self-funders. However, the 2010 election reveals that many candidates are still willing to take the risk and hope they are the exception to the rule.
- 1. Carroll, Lauren, “Is Donald Trump self-funding his campaign? Sort of,” PolitiFact, February 10, 2016, available from http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/feb/10/donald-trump/donald-trump-self-funding-his-campaign-sort/, accessed June 24, 2016.
- 2. Blumenthal, Paul, “This Guy Spent A Record $12.7 Million Running For Congress–And Lost,” The Huffington Post, April 26, 2016, available from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/david-trone-self-funding-maryland_us_571f92d6e4b0f309baeea63c, accessed June 24, 2016.
- 3. Livingston, Abby, “Self-Funders Dominate Texas Delegation in Congress,” The Texas Tribune, May 26, 2016, available from https://www.texastribune.org/2016/05/26/self-funders-dominate-texas-washington-delegation/, accessed June 24, 2016.
- 4. Bauer, Anne, “The Efficacy of Self-Funding a Political Campaign,” National Institute on Money in State Politics, June 22, 2010, available from http://www.followthemoney.org/research/institute-reports/the-efficacy-of-self-funding-a-political-campaign/, accessed June 24, 2016.
- 5. Many states allow candidates to report self-financing on a separate form, which can result in formatting that is different than other contributors disclosed by the candidate. Here is a prime example: http://www.followthemoney.org/show-me?f-core=1&f-fc=2&c-t-eid=6500478&d-ccg=17&d-id=35367452#[{1|gro=d-id (See “Original Name”). Though such transactions are coded as a candidate contribution, it sometimes requires Institute Researchers to manually identify cases of self-financing.
- 6. The New York Times, “Election Results: California,” n.d., available from http://elections.nytimes.com/2010/results/california, accessed June 24, 2016.
- 7. The New York Times, “Primary Results: Connecticut,” August 10, 2010, available from http://elections.nytimes.com/2010/results/primaries/connecticut, accessed June 24, 2016.
- 8. Ibid.
- 9. The New York Times, “Election Results: Connecticut,” n.d., available from http://elections.nytimes.com/2010/results/connecticut, accessed June 24, 2016.
- 10. The New York Times, “Election Results: Florida,” n.d., available from http://elections.nytimes.com/2010/results/florida, accessed June 24, 2016.
- 11. The Institute defines “self financing” as any money provided to a candidate by himself or herself, an immediate family member, or a family trust. A “self-funded candidate” is defined as a candidate in which self-financing accounts for more than half of his or her campaign contribution total.
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