Barron's seems to think so.

But their analysis is flawed. For several reasons -- all of which are part of this fundamental fact about campaign cash: it is a necessary, but insufficient, criterion of electoral success.

(1) A dollar is worth more to a challenger than an incumbent. The reason is that challengers have to introduce themselves to the electorate, while incumbents do not. The electorate always has a very well-formed opinion of the incumbent, and so the marginal dollar will just be less effective for him than the challenger. So, a challenger who spends $2,000,000 will change more minds than an incumbent who spends $2,000,000.

(2) Not all campaign dollars are created equal. The marginal dollar required to run your first political ad is worth less than the marginal dollar required to run your seventeenth political ad. Why? Because your first ad is more likely to convince voters than your seventeenth. Thus -- some differences, say between $50,000 and $1,000,000, are much more critical than other differences, say between $3,050,000 and $4,000,000.

(3) Weak incumbents raise more money than strong incumbents. Statistical analysis actually shows that the more money an incumbent spends, the more likely he/she is to lose. Is it because his/her advertising is just that bad? No. Of course not. It is because incumbents who are vulnerable are the ones who raise and spend lots of cash. So -- the fact that Republican incumbents have more money than their Democratic challengers can be a sign both of strength (in the case of safe members with less than $1 million in the bank going up against challengers with less than $50,000) and weakness (in the case of weak members with more than $3 million in the bank going up against challengers with $2 million).

(4) Well-funded challengers almost always have good angles. That is how they have become well-funded. Strategic donors in the opposing party have sensed a weakness in the incumbent, or a strength in the challenger, and have decided to fund the latter's attack. Simply stated, they think the attack angle will work. So, well-funded challengers almost always have campaign strengths that dollars are used to actualize.

Why, then, is Barron's historical track record so accurate? Three reasons: (1) A direct dollar-to-dollar evaluation is probably more appropriate in open seat elections, and so they will make a genuine theoretical "purchase" there; (2) The reelection rate of incumbents has been rising slowly-but-surely in the time period that their data spans, and incumbents almost always have more money than their challengers; (3) Money is indeed important, and so Barron's model can be expected to have some predictive accuracy -- it is just that it is not important in the way that Barron's thinks. Even a misspecified model can be highly accurate in its predictions. Its problems will show up in other ways (e.g. non-random error, which I am guessing is probably the case here; they are probably more likely to be wrong for some cases than for others, e.g. self-funders).

(In point of fact -- most media types tend to make predictions based upon misspecified models. And the biggest problem is not misspecification, but that they do not realize that they are actually using models in the first place. This is one of the many problems that occur when English majors do political science.)

Again: the way to think about money is to think of it as a necessary but insufficient criterion of electoral success. Challengers need enough money to (a) introduce themselves to the electorate and (b) offer themselves as a credible alternative -- but that almost never requires them to actually spend more money than the incumbent.

Accordingly, Barron's method of a simple tabulation of the Republican-held contested districts where the Democrats have more money underestimates Democratic strength.

It also seems to me to be poorly applied - for instance, in predicting Busby to win over Bilbray, they fail to account for the fact that (a) most of Busby's money was spent in the Special Election and (b) Busby raised/spent more in the Special Election and still lost. They also seem to fail to properly account for (i) self-funders, like Jack Davis in NY 26, who have the capacity to draw funds quickly; and (ii) the fact that the most promising of challengers always get large influxes of cash after the Quarter III reports are published.

The correct way to evaluate the money situation is to (i) establish a reasonable "floor" of dollars minimally necessary for electoral success and (ii) estimate the number of challengers who will meet that standard. Unfortunately, nobody has really done that -- and I have been struck by the number of GOP-held seats that have "become" marginally competitive despite challengers who obviously have insufficient funds.

So -- if Barron's is way too bullish about the GOP, others have been way too bullish about the Democrats. Money matters -- not in the way that Barron's thinks. But it matters more than what others have implicitly estimated.