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DEMAND FOR DURABLE AND NON-DURABLE POLITICAL GOODS

for independent groups the average contribution is 23 percent; for

unknown groups 23 percent; and for one-shot groups it is 19 percent.
Clearly, these three groups are spending much less on this durable

political good. The two sample one-sided t-test values for the null

hypotheses that a specific group’s contributions to political parties are
not different than the others’ are the following: For independent groups

versus others -4.64; unknown groups versus others -1.34; and one-shot
versus others -3.67. Thus, these differences are statistically significant at

1 percent level.
To shed further light on this issue, we prepare Table 5. This table

presents the media, campaign direct mailing and contributions to

political parties by independent, unknown, one-shot groups. As this
table shows there are statistically significant differences between union

affiliated and these groups.

Concluding Remarks
Campaign activity by political advocacy groups will reflect an

attempt by those groups to make optimal allocation of resources among
the variety of political expenditures available to them toward the end of

attaining the political outcome they desire. In this paper we have shown

that there are clear differences in the pattern of campaign expenditures
these groups make when groups are differentiated by type, ideology and

duration of political activity.

Our specific finding is that one-shot, issue based advocacy groups
which can be more often characterized as non-party and non-union (that is

classified as independent groups in this analysis), of unknown ideology and
only active in a single political cycle will behave such that they allocate

their funds toward direct mailing campaigns and media messages rather
than make contributions to parties, candidates or committees. The

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