Starting from the argument that campaign spending impacts more challengers than incumbents, in elections where candidates from institutionalized parties run against candidates from emerging parties and independents, and where there are no incumbents, the effect of campaign spending should be weaker for the former, whose parties have more name recognition. With data on the 1278 constitutional conven-tion candidates that ran for the 138 seats in the 28 open list proportional representation districts in Chile in May of 2021, we test two hypotheses on the determinants of elec-toral success. We find a positive effect of campaign spending, but campaign spending has an interactive negative effect on the success of candidates from leftwing and right-wing institutionalized parties. Campaign spending had a higher return for candidates from emerging groups and parties than for candidates from institutionalized parties.