Politicians who care about the spoils of office may underprovide a public g
ood because its benefits cannot be targeted to voters as easily as pork-bar
rel spending. We compare a winner-take-all system-where all the spoils go t
o the winner-to a proportional system-where the spoils of office are split
among candidates proportionally to their share of the vote. In a winner-tak
e-all system the public good is provided less often than in a proportional
system when the public good is particularly desirable. We then consider the
electoral college system and show that it is particularly subject to this
inefficiency.