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Republicans Used Twitter to Bypass Election Laws

November 17, 2014 at 8:35 am ET By Taegan Goddard 12 Comments

“Republicans and outside groups used anonymous Twitter accounts to share internal polling data ahead of the midterm elections, CNN has learned, a practice that raises questions about whether they violated campaign finance laws that prohibit coordination.”

“The Twitter accounts were hidden in plain sight. The profiles were publicly available but meaningless without knowledge of how to find them and decode the information, according to a source with knowledge of the activities.”

“The practice is the latest effort in the quest by political operatives to exploit the murky world of campaign finance laws at a time when limits on spending in politics are eroding and regulators are being defanged.”

Filed Under: Campaign Finance Tagged With: outside spending, Twitter

Outside Spending Didn’t Buy the Election

November 13, 2014 at 10:50 am ET By Taegan Goddard 6 Comments

New research from Alan Abramowitz: “The correlation between the Democratic and Republican outside spending difference and the Democratic margin was .23, which is not statistically significant. In contrast, the correlation between the Democratic margin and incumbency status was a more significant .76, and the correlation between the Democratic Senate margin in 2014 and the Democratic presidential vote margin in 2012 was an even more significant .89.”

“In other words, partisanship in a polarized era, represented by the ’12 presidential vote margin, was by far the strongest predictor of 2014’s Senate vote. Naturally, incumbency status is also significant. But the difference between amounts of outside spending by groups affiliated with both parties has surprisingly little effect, perhaps because both sides spent so much that the money from Republicans neutralized the cash from Democrats, and vice versa.”

Filed Under: 2014 Campaign Tagged With: outside spending, Super PACs

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About Political Wire

Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.

Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.

Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.

Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.

Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.

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