Pork-barrel spending is the appropriation of federal money for use in projects that only benefit narrowly defined groups. In the past, researchers have attempted to show that pork-barrel spending increases the likelihood of an incumbent being reelected but empirical evidence has been hard to find. I hypothesize that pork-barrel spending does not directly increase the likelihood of reelection; instead, pork-barrel spending can be used to increase fundraising and the additional campaign funds are then used to increase the likelihood of being reelected. I find that a $10 million increase in pork-barrel spending will lead to a 0.10% increase in the share of the vote in an election. While this may not seem like a major advantage to some, several elections over the past few years have been decided by < 1%. Therefore, legislators in tightly contested races may be able to use pork-barrel spending to gain some degree of separation from their challenger.

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使用税金进行连任：猪肉桶支出对选举成功的影响

猪肉桶支出是联邦资金用于仅使狭义群体受益的项目的拨款。在过去，研究人员试图表明猪肉支出增加了现任者被重新选择的可能性，但实证证据很难找到。我假设猪肉桶支出不会直接增加连任的可能性；相反，猪肉桶支出可用于增加筹款，然后使用额外的竞选资金来增加被重击的可能性。我发现猪肉桶支出增加 1000 万美元将导致选举中的选票份额增加 0.10%。虽然这对某些人来说似乎不是一个主要优势，但过去几年的几次选举都是由 < 1% 决定的。所以，