Voter Acquisition Costs

Grace Marshall: Remember our first campaign?
James Marshall: In the House? Yeah. Driving downstate with...who was that kid, our volunteer?
Grace Marshall: Henry.
James Marshall: Henry, with the convertible.
Grace Marshall: With the broken top.
James Marshall: And the snow coming in.
Grace Marshall: We were the only three people who thought you could win.
--Air Force One

Just as companies face costs (e.g., channel development, marketing) to acquire customers, politicians involved in elections determined by democratic process face costs to acquire voters. Politicians must campaign to get their name and message out. They might also try to acquire votes by doing things for prospects such as giving them free cell phones or giving them rides to the polls on election day.

Voter acquisition costs grow with geographic scope of an election. Politicians in local races face relatively low voter acquisition costs because voters are close by. It costs less to reach voters because there are less of them to reach and messages do not have to be conveyed as far. Campaigns are likely to be conducted on a more intimate level, with politicians themselves personally contacting voters, perhaps even door-to-door.

As elections cover more territory, voter acquisition costs quickly escalate. If one imagines the ground politicians have to cover as radiating outwards from election headquarters in a circular fashion, then cost to influence voters increases with the square of distance. Campaigns take on a 'mass production' feel and become less personal in order to economize scarce acquisition resources.

Once geographic scope expands beyond a certain point, then it becomes cost prohibitive for politicians to reach all prospective voters. When this situation arises, campaigns must decide which prospects to pursue and which ones to ignore.

Purely from a voter acquisition cost perspective, then, it follows that the greater the geographic scope of an election, the more likely that politicians will ignore some fraction of the electorate out of economic necessity.