Fundraising is particularly effective in open primaries, such as this one. From the linked article:
But in 2017, Bonica published a study that found, unlike in the general election, early fundraising strongly predicted who would win primary races. That matches up with other research suggesting that advertising can have a serious effect on how people vote if the candidate buying the ads is not already well-known and if the election at hand is less predetermined along partisan lines.
Basically, said Darrell West, vice president and director of governance studies at the Brookings Institution, advertising is useful for making voters aware that a candidate or an issue exists at all. Once you’ve established that you’re real and that enough people are paying attention to you to give you a decent chunk of money, you reach a point of diminishing returns (i.e., Paul Ryan did not have to spend $13 million to earn his seat). But a congressperson running in a close race, with no incumbent — or someone running for small-potatoes local offices that voters often just skip on the ballot — is probably getting a lot more bang for their buck.
Although early fundraising could be correlational with success rather than causal, if it’s an indicator of who can generate support from the electorate.
(I’d be pretty confident there’s an effect like this but don’t know how strong, and haven’t tried to understand if the article you’re quoting from tries to correct for it.)
Fundraising is particularly effective in open primaries, such as this one. From the linked article:
Although early fundraising could be correlational with success rather than causal, if it’s an indicator of who can generate support from the electorate.
(I’d be pretty confident there’s an effect like this but don’t know how strong, and haven’t tried to understand if the article you’re quoting from tries to correct for it.)