Compare methods

	Vote Buying Analysis	Distributive Politics Analysis
Field	Political Economy	Political Economy
Family	Regression model	Regression model
Year of origin	2008	1986
Originator	Simeon Nichter; Ezequiel Gonzalez-Ocantos et al.	Gary Cox & Mathew McCubbins (core); Avinash Dixit & John Londregan (swing)
Type	Measurement-and-targeting regression model	Regression analysis of electorally motivated spending allocation
Seminal source	Nichter, S. (2008). Vote Buying or Turnout Buying? Machine Politics and the Secret Ballot. American Political Science Review, 102(1), 19-31.	Cox, G. W., & McCubbins, M. D. (1986). Electoral Politics as a Redistributive Game. The Journal of Politics, 48(2), 370-389.
Aliases	Electoral Clientelism Measurement, Turnout Buying Analysis, Vote-Buying Targeting Model, List-Experiment Vote Buying	Electoral Targeting Analysis, Swing versus Core Voter Analysis, Pork Barrel Politics Analysis, Tactical Redistribution Analysis
Related	3	3
Summary	Vote buying analysis is the measurement-and-modeling toolkit for studying the distribution of private goods or cash in exchange for electoral support. Two problems define the field. First, who is being paid: Simeon Nichter's 2008 article showed that machines frequently engage in turnout buying — paying their own already-loyal supporters to show up — rather than the classic vote buying of swing voters, a distinction with sharp implications for who gets targeted. Second, how to measure something respondents are reluctant to admit: Gonzalez-Ocantos and colleagues' 2012 study demonstrated that direct survey questions sharply understate vote buying because of social-desirability bias and that list experiments recover far higher, more credible prevalence. Vote buying analysis combines such debiased measurement with regression models of targeting.	Distributive politics analysis studies how governments allocate divisible public spending — grants, transfers, projects, and pork — across districts and groups to maximize electoral support. Two competing theories anchor the field. The swing-voter logic, formalized by Avinash Dixit and John Londregan in 1996 (building on Lindbeck and Weibull), holds that parties target marginal districts where votes are most responsive to spending. The core-voter logic, associated with Gary Cox and Mathew McCubbins's 1986 redistributive-game model, holds that parties instead reward loyal supporters whose preferences and reliability they know best. The empirical method is a regression of observed transfers on electoral characteristics — district marginality and partisan alignment — to test which targeting strategy the data reveal.