Resumen de Parties and Electoral Performance in the Market for Political Consultants

Gregory J. Martin, Zachary Peskowitz

• We investigate whether the hiring relationships of candidates and political consulting firms better resembles the predictions of the “adversarial” or “allied” models of consultant-party interaction. We find that the highest-quality consultants are not allocated to the most competitive races, consultant-candidate relationships persist even as candidates' electoral prospects change, and firms who work for challengers face a higher risk of market exit than firms working for incumbents. The market focuses entirely on win-loss records and ignores the information on consultant performance available in candidates' vote shares. These findings depict a market driven by individual candidate, rather than aggregate party, goals.