Individual Campaign Contributions Research Articles

The Nationalization of Individual Campaign Contributions in U.S. Senate Elections, 1984-2020

This article explores the trend of increasing nationalization in American politics and its effect on the U.S. Senate's federalizing dynamics, using campaign finance as an indicator. We analyze the geographic distribution of campaign contributions to U.S. Senate races from 1984 to 2020, tracing the nationalization of donor behavior in America. Key findings suggest that more ideologically conservative senators and those running for their first election are likely to rely heavily on out-of-state donations, with regional differences also evident. We argue that the nationalization of campaign finance challenges the Senate's representative structure and hints at another dimension of inequality in American politics—geographical versus national influence. This study offers no definitive normative argument but posits restricting out-of-state donations as a potential solution to address the growing inequality in the voting power of Senate members.

Sidestepping primary reform: political action in response to institutional change

AbstractMany believe primary elections distort representation in American legislatures because unrepresentative actors nominate extremist candidates. Advocates have reformed primaries to broaden voter participation and increase representation. Empirical evidence, however, is quite variable on the effects of reform. I argue that when institutional reform narrows one pathway of political influence, aggrieved actors take political action elsewhere to circumvent reform. I use a difference-in-differences design in the American states and find that although changing primary rules increases primary turnout, campaign contributions also increase with reform. Implementing nonpartisan primaries and reforming partisan primaries lead to estimated 9 and 21 percent increases in individual campaign contributions per cycle. This suggests actors substitute action across avenues of political influence to limit effects of institutional reform.

Launching for success: The effects of psychological distance and mental simulation on funding decisions and crowdfunding performance

This research examines how potential backers form mental representations of products in reward-based crowdfunding campaigns, and how these representations affect funding decisions and campaign performance. To test our framework, we conducted four experiments and also drew on a sample of 961 Kickstarter campaigns. Our results show that two campaign characteristics – the product's development stage and the indicated time to product delivery – determine the psychological distance that supporters experience in response to a campaign, and that psychological distance, in turn, inhibits individual campaign contributions and cumulative campaign success. Furthermore, we find that encouraging supporters to imagine the benefits of product usage is an effective means to increase support for campaigns that elicit high psychological distance.

Making Rallies Great Again: The Effects of Presidential Campaign Rallies on Voter Behavior, 2008-2016

Populism has surged around world in recent decades. One campaign activity that may be especially important for populist leaders is holding large rallies to gain unmediated support from the people. In this paper, we explore whether populist leaders are particularly effective in gaining support via their rallies. We do this by studying effect of campaign rallies held by Donald Trump and other U.S. Presidential candidates since 2008. To measure short-run causal impact of rallies, we exploit fact that some respondents in CCES were surveyed a few days before a rally, while others were surveyed a few days afterwards. We find that Trump's rallies produced a short-lived increase in his support over Clinton (especially among leaning Republicans), intention to vote (especially among strong Republicans), and individual campaign contributions for him. We do not find consistent, robust effects for other candidates. In terms of channels, we find that local media coverage of all candidates increased around their rallies, suggesting that quantity of media coverage alone does not explain findings. Institutional subscribers to NBER working paper series, and residents of developing countries may download this paper without additional charge at www.nber.org.

Campaign Contributions by Non‐profit Executives and Government Grants

AbstractUnited States election candidates seek monetary support for their campaigns and many individuals oblige. Non‐profit organizations are limited in their political spending, but their executives, in a personal capacity, are not. This paper investigates whether individual campaign contributions are a political workaround for non‐profits. I pair non‐profit tax filings and Federal Election Commission records to form the first large‐scale panel linking non‐profit executive contributions and non‐profit financials. My analysis covers the 1998, 2000 and 2002 elections for 29,682 non‐profit organizations. I estimate a series of models and find an economically significant, robust and positive relationship.

Political Giving: Making Sense of Individual Campaign Contributions

Political Giving: Making Sense of Individual Campaign Contributions

Political giving: making sense of individual campaign contributions

Political giving: making sense of individual campaign contributions

Dollars on the Sidewalk: Should U.S. Presidential Candidates Advertise in Uncontested States?

Presidential candidates in the United States do not intentionally advertise in states without rigorous competition for electoral votes. However, in some areas of noncompetitive states, media markets overlap with battleground states, exposing these regions to political ads. These spillover advertisements allow us to examine the relationship between advertisements and individual campaign contributions, with data from the Wisconsin Advertising Project and the Federal Elections Commission. Using propensity‐score matching within uncontested states, we find that 2008 aggregate giving in zip codes exposed to political ads was approximately $6,100 (28.1% of mean contributions) more than in similar zip codes without advertisements.

Individual Campaign Contributions and Voter Turnout: The Role of Broadband Network Availability

I identify the effect of broadband network availability on individual campaign donations and electoral participation. Using broadband availability as an instrumental variable, I then look for the effect of individual campaign contributions on electoral participation. I find that broadband explains a 40 percent increase in contributions since the mid-1990s. Focusing on electoral outcomes in presidential election years, I then find that broadband diffusion has led to a 3 percentage points increase in voter turnout, a 3 percentage points increase in democratic vote share, and a 2 percentage points increase in winning margins. I finally show that another half percentage point increase increase in voter turnout can be attributed to individual campaign contributions, an effect four times larger than the least squares estimate. Overall, my findings are consistent with a broadband effect channeling through information provision. They also help rehabilitate the popular view that campaign contributions play an instrumental role in elections.

Campaign Contributions and U.S. Foreign Policy Outcomes: An Analysis of Cuban American Interests

To what extent are ethnic minority interest groups able to influence U.S. foreign policy? Current case study research has identified several factors that may condition the ability of diasporic groups to influence foreign policy toward ancestral “homelands.” To this point, existing studies have been unable to isolate the impact of campaign contributions from other factors that may influence U.S. foreign policy decision making. The current study uses a combination of conditional and standard logistic regression to examine the impact of Cuban American interest group and individual campaign contributions on a series of votes on key amendments in the 108th and 109th Congresses. Results from the study support the idea that the Cuban diasporic community in the United States has had an impact on U.S. foreign policy toward Cuba. However, there are significant limits to this influence conditioned in part by issue salience.

Individual campaign contributions in a Downsian model: expressive and instrumental motives

We investigate in a Downsian framework the possibility of and rationale for individual campaign contributions under various combinations of voters’ and candidates’ objective functions. We first show in a simple voting model that expressive motives might give rise to contributions and separated positions, while instrumental motives will not. We then show in a probabilistic voting model that both motives could lead to giving and policy divergence. However, when this is the case, positions are more separated, contributions are greater, and society’s welfare is higher when motives are expressive than when motives are instrumental.

Individual campaign contributions and candidate ideology

Individual citizens are the largest source of contributions for congressional candidates in the United States. This paper investigates if and how fundraising from this source is related to the ideological positions of candidates. Specifically, we ask whether the amount of contributions depends on: (1) the extremity of candidate ideology; and (2) the level of candidate divergence in the same race. These results have important implications for candidate positioning strategies, as well as for evaluating the effects of recent campaign finance reforms.

“One Man, One Dollar”? Campaign contribution limits, equal influence, and political communication

Arguably the most important campaign finance regulations in U.S. federal elections are limits imposed on individual campaign contributions. One of the principal arguments in support of these contribution limits has been that they equalize the influence of individual donors and thereby cause candidates' aggregate financial resources to more accurately reflect public support. I construct a formal model to evaluate this argument. The analysis shows that a necessary condition for it to apply is that a candidate's reliance on large contributions is negatively related to voter-preferred characteristics which cannot be credibly revealed through campaign advertisements. Using data on elections to the House of Representatives between 1992 and 2000, I find no evidence that such a relationship exists. This result casts doubt on the equalization argument in support of campaign contribution limits.

The Political Geography of Campaign Contributions in American Politics

This article examines the geographic origins of individual campaign contributions to the Republican and Democratic parties and their candidates from 1992 to 2004. Results demonstrate that contributions are affected by how potential givers are situated in space. There is a geographic pattern to giving independent of wealth, age, occupation, and other individual characteristics that predict donations. Campaign contributors are not only people with resources and incentives to participate, but also part of networks in which social influence can be brought to bear in the solicitation of contributions. The article also shows that the Republican and Democratic donor bases are much more similar geographically than their bases of electoral support.

The Determinants of Individuals' Campaign Contributions To Congressional Campaigns

Using data obtained from the FEC, an exploratory empirical sketch of the determinants of individuals' contributions to congressional candidates for the 1980 and 1982 election cycles is constructed. There appear to be important differences between individual and institutional (PAC and party) campaign contributions. Individual contributions make up a much larger share of the challengers' finances than the incumbents' finances and because individual contributions require more time and effort to acquire, challengers face a cruel corollary to the incumbent advantage. Challengers have to work harder to receive less money. In addition, the data suggest individual contributors are not swayed by the race and sex of the candidate, which may not be true for institutional contributors. Finally, this work questions the validity of the classical assumption that challengers' fund-raising efforts are unaffected by the size of the incumbents' campaign chest.