The Growth of Campaign Advertising in the United States, 1880–1930

When did candidate-centered campaign advertising take off in the United States, and what accounts for this growth? In this article, we analyze a novel data set of political advertisements in newspapers between 1880 and 1930. We show that there was a sharp increase in candidates’ newspaper advertising beginning around 1910. We exploit the panel structure of these data to investigate the impact of political reforms on advertising. The results suggest that the introduction of the direct primary substantially increased the number of campaign advertisements for candidates in general election races. They also suggest that the switch to nonpartisan elections increased newspaper advertisements by candidates for judicial offices. We do not find similar effects for the Australian ballot. Finally, we find little evidence that reforms affected advertising in US presidential races or by political parties.