Super PACs Research Articles

Calling All Disaffected Republicans: Anti-Trump Campaign Messaging During the 2020 Election

The emergence of groups of rogue Republican strategists, such as the Lincoln Project, openly campaigning against the party candidate, Donald Trump, was a unique feature of the 2020 U.S. presidential election. This study content analyzes Twitter campaign messaging (N = 2,317) by two prominent super PACs, the Lincoln Project and Republican Accountability Project (RAP), as they sought to mobilize disaffected republicans and conservative voters against Donald Trump, during the 2020 presidential election. Findings highlight patterns of messaging that support existing research on campaign communication, as well as departures from findings seen in prior work. Further, results showcase patterns of campaign messaging on social media platforms that may be particularly effective at eliciting audience engagement.

Examining public perceptions of US campaign finance over time through survey experiments

In Buckley v. Valeo (1976), the US Supreme Court ruled that campaign finance regulations “are appropriate legislative weapons against the reality or appearance of improper influence.” Using data from multiple survey experiments repeated across six CCES surveys from 2012 to 2020, we test whether varied information regarding US campaign finance institutions and laws alter public perceptions of the campaign finance system and campaign finance reform across time, including the perception of improper influence. Respondents had more negative attitudes toward candidates who received support from Super PACs. However, respondents were not moved by primed differences in expenditure limits, coordination, or donation disclosure. Ultimately, we find that the majority of Americans dislike and distrust the campaign finance system and generally remain unmoved by any experimentally-primed differences. These experimental findings remain consistent across time, indicating that attitudes toward the US campaign finance system are stable and resistant to change.

The impact of associational ties on the financing of super PACs

The impact of associational ties on the financing of super PACs

Going Micro to Go Negative?

Spreading uncivil negative campaign messages is a “high-risk, high reward” campaign strategy since certain voters are more likely to be swayed by negative messaging whereas other voters are more inclined to feel sympathy with the attacked. Due to its risks, campaigns may attempt to outsource their uncivil ads to outside groups thus distancing themselves from the negativity and potentially avoiding any backlash. But at a time when advertising platforms boast of their ability to deliver ads to highly targeted audiences, uncivil negative ads could also be optimized to narrowly target citizens to which they are more likely to appeal. To study whether such optimizations are occurring, we retrieve all online advertisements that were placed on Facebook platforms (incl. Instagram) in the seven months prior to the US 2020 election. We perform multilevel ordinal regressions and find that ads from official political campaigns are more likely to be toxic when targeted at a narrower audience, whereas “dark money” outside groups (like super PACs and non-profits) are more likely to target broad audiences with their toxicity. In addition, we find that ads from outside groups are more likely to be toxic. We discuss the findings in light of this evidence and reflect upon future research regarding microtargeting negative messages on online platforms such as Facebook and Instagram.

Outsiders among outside groups? Campaign advertising and the electability of female US House candidates

ABSTRACT Female candidates have long benefitted from their connections to PACs. However, many of the studies on women and PACs were published prior to the proliferation of ideologically-oriented Super PACs, 501c dark money groups, and 527s in the 2010s. To examine the impact of these groups on female candidates, this paper asks whether outside groups are less likely to run television ads targeting women. We expect outside groups will run more ads for their preferred candidate when the opposition is a male quality candidate because gendered recruitment networks, gender stereotypes, and gendered media coverage combine to create a more difficult path to office for female quality candidates. Therefore, we expect outside groups will perceive fewer incentives to spend their valuable resources fending off challenges from female (quality) candidates. We test this hypothesis using data from Wesleyan Media Project, an original dataset on US House candidates, the US Census, and the Cook Political Report. We find support for our expectation that the number of ads outside groups air is influenced by both the gender and quality of the opposition to their preferred candidate among Republican-leaning outside groups, but not among Democratic-leaning ones.

Polling, Partisanship, and Promoting Violence: New Developments in Impression Management From Candidate and Super PAC Advertisements

Super PACs have become a pivotal force in U.S. elections, often working in tandem with political campaigns to create cohesive messages in advertisements that serve as a tool for impression management. In previous research, I outlined a series of performance types, impression management techniques used by candidates and Super PACS in the 2012 Republican Primary. Since then, a second Republican Primary occurred, and a more expansive dataset on 2012 was released. In this paper I replicate my past work with the new dataset and compare performance types in advertisements from the 2012 and 2016 primaries. When comparing datasets, the findings were overwhelmingly consistent. At the same time, there were fundamental changes between 2012 and 2016. Notably, the inclusion of a new performance type, “the warrior,” which promotes an eagerness to use physical violence toward non-Americans. This change further indicates the rightward shift in Republican messaging that leans into fascism.

Dark Money in Congressional House Elections

The deregulation in campaign finance, stemming from the 2010 United States Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, has led to nonprofit organizations with anonymous donors spending on advertisements targeting candidates. I study the effects of this “dark money” 501(c)(4) nonprofit spending on election outcomes in US Congressional House elections. Since 501(c)(4)s are not legally required to disclose spending to the Federal Election Commission, I use advertising data to measure their behavior. I estimate a model of the voter’s candidate choice, which is influenced by the spending of different groups. I find that 501(c)(4)s do not have significant effects on candidate vote share when accounting for the spending of candidates, parties, PACs, and Super PACs.

Allocating Unlimited Money: What Explains Super PAC Spending in Congressional Elections?

Abstract How do Super PACs allocate their resources? The question is both timely and relevant, particularly as we reflect on the ten-year anniversary of the Citizens United ruling. Super PACs now outspend – sometimes by huge margins, as in the 2016 presidential election – all other groups’ independent expenditures including those of parties, unions, and 501(c) organizations. The issue is especially important in congressional politics, where Super PACs have an opportunity to shape the institution every two years through congressional elections. Utilizing outside spending data from the Center for Responsive Politics, we analyze four U.S. House election cycles since the Supreme Court’s landmark 2010 Citizens United ruling (2012–2018). The likelihood that Super PACs invest in a race is strongly determined by the electoral context, even after controlling for the legislative influence of the incumbent member of Congress.

Game Changers: How Dark Money and Super PACs are Transforming U.S. Campaigns

Game Changers: How Dark Money and Super PACs are Transforming U.S. Campaigns

Campaign Finance in the Age of Super PACs

The United States Supreme Court 2010 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission led to a major de-regulation of election campaign finance law. A new political action committee emerged from this case, known as the Super PAC, with a relatively unfettered ability to raise and spend money in elections. How were campaign spending and electoral outcomes affected? I characterize the influence of Super PACs on U.S. Congressional general and primary elections by estimating an election contest model. I exploit variation in donor finances, background information on candidates, and the dynamic model structure to deal with candidate unobservables. Results indicate that Super PACs do not have significant influence on voting outcomes but did increase election spending between 2010-2016. They affect behavior of other committees, with differences across political party and incumbency status. Finally, Super PACs have modest effects on candidate platforms and entry.

The Origin and Evolution of Super PACs: a Darwinian Examination of a Campaign Finance Species

A series of campaign finance rulings, most notably the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision, set off a sea change in how electoral politics are funded in the United States. The result is an evolutionary break that disrupted the campaign finance environment in ways that allowed a new species of organization, the super PAC, to thrive. Other traditional campaign finance organizations, such as political parties and political action committees, have not adapted as well and now play a reduced role relative to the new “super species.”

Leave the Attacking to Others: Assessing the Effectiveness of Candidate Endorsed and Independently Sourced Televised Attack Ads in the 2016 Presidential Election

ABSTRACT Modern campaigns in the Citizens United era are awash with negativity, much of which originates from independent political groups (e.g., Super PACs, 501c organizations, etc.). In contrast to the plethora of work showing candidate endorsed attacks to be ineffective, more recent experimental evidence suggests that candidates may benefit from these independently sourced attack ads. However, the findings derived from this experimental research on independent attacks suffer from three critical shortcomings. The present paper identifies and addresses these shortcomings by assessing the net result of candidate endorsed and independently sponsored negativity using real presidential campaign data. The following develops a theory on the effects of source in negative campaigning for the highest office of the land, and tests whether it conforms to political behavior exhibited during the 2016 presidential campaign at both the state and county level. Results show the source of an attack matters, even in presidential contests, a finding particularly relevant given the hundreds of millions of dollars of attack ads from outside sources which saturate the televised airwaves of presidential campaigns today and well into the foreseeable future.

PACs and Super PACs: Measuring the Changing Nature of Corruption Behavior

Corruption behavior has been difficult to both observe and measure despite its illegal nature and importance to firms and society both economically and politically. In empirical research, proxies for corruption are frequently generated. A popular proxy, as in Smith (2016), is corruption convictions. This study extends Smith’s analysis by examining data from 1998-2016, using Smith’s shielding and liquidity hypotheses. Through an updated and enhanced dataset, this study finds that the shielding hypothesis is supported for the sample; however, in the post-Citizens United subsample corruption convictions are not significant in various regressions. This study discusses the implications of the latter result and underscores the need for further research with a more comprehensive model to examine corruption in greater detail.

How Super PACs Have Transformed the Federal Campaign Finance System: A Political Scientists' Amicus Brief to the Supreme Court.

This paper served as an amicus brief to the Supreme Court concerning Representative Ted Lieu et. al vs. Federal Election Commission, a petition for review of the 2010 D.C. Circuit Court decision that legalized Super PACs. The brief finds that Super PACs accepting unlimited contributions spend nearly one in every four federal election campaign dollars, concentrated on the most competitive races. They enable million-dollar donors to support organizations marketing and conducting themselves as extensions of candidates’ and parties’ campaigns — regardless of federal contribution limits applying to those campaigns. Thus Super PACs undermine the contribution limits that are the very basis of the federal campaign finance system.

Legitimacy Matters: The Case for Public Financing in Prosecutor Elections

Since 2015, there has been much excitement and debate over a new wave of elected prosecutors known as prosecutors. Counties that include major cities like Chicago, Dallas, Boston, and Philadelphia now have top local prosecutors who have promised to help end mass incarceration. The elephant in the room when it comes to these progressive prosecutors is that a huge portion of them were elected with the help of George Soros-affiliated Super PACs that have contributed millions to local races in the form of independent expenditures. While much of their work is to be commended, it is crucial that criminal justice reformers take stock of the degree of influence has in these elections. This Article contributes the first-ever empirical studies on the Soros effect in these races, examining the percentage of progressive prosecutor candidate funding that comes from Soros-affiliated PACs and the Cost Per Vote value of the Soros-financed independent expenditures for these candidates. Findings include that the existence of Soros-affiliated PAC money in a race and its Cost Per Vote can usually lead to successful predictions for the success of progressive prosecutor candidates. In addition, the higher the Cost Per Vote value that benefited an individual candidate is, the more radical that candidate's policy agenda will likely be, as well as any ensuing political backlash. This authenticates the popular narrative that is buying locally elected prosecutor seats, which has done great harm to progressive elected prosecutors once in office. The Article suggests that one solution is small-donor public financing, which would encourage robust competition in these elections without sacrificing criminal justice legitimacy.

Dark-ish Money: What ‘Pop-Up PACs’ Can Teach Us About Donors and Disclosure

Since the Citizens United decision of 2010, the amount of “dark money”–or independent expenditures from groups that don’t disclose their donors–has grown to encompass a significant slice of total spending in American elections. How does the absence of disclosure affect the behavior of both donors and electioneering organizations? While the secretive design of dark money makes data on them extremely limited, the 2018 election provided a useful stand-in to examine the role of disclosure in elections. ‘Pop-Up PACs’ are super PACs that form just after the last disclosure federal deadline before an election–allowing them to postpone revealing their donors until after voters have gone to the polls. In total, 63 super PACs employed this tactic during the 2018 midterms, spending a combined $21.6 million. Examining these late-disclosing super PACs, I find that donors who gave to Pop-Up PACs supported a far less ideologically extreme set of candidate when giving directly and transparently to other candidates. These late-disclosing super PACs also supported more ideologically extreme candidates than did super PACs who disclosed their donors prior to an election. In sum, these results add credence to theories that donors alter their behavior in response to social pressures and that being able to hide the sources of one’s money correlates with an electoral organization eschewing moderates in favor of extremists.

Amicus Brief for Scholars Supporting Appellants’ Petition for Initial Hearing en banc, Lieu v. Federal Election Commission, No. 1:16-cv-02201-EGS (D.C. Cir.)

Plaintiffs-Appellants have asked the Court to reconsider its decision in SpeechNow.org v. Federal Election Commission, 599 F.3d 686 (D.C. Cir. 2010), which gave rise to so-called Super PACs and similar independent expenditure organizations. The Court in SpeechNow recognized that the “appearance of corruption” could justify campaign finance regulation under Supreme Court precedent. Id. at 692. But the Court went on to state that, “[i]n light of the [Supreme] Court’s holding as a matter of law that independent expenditures do not corrupt or create the appearance of quid pro quo corruption, contributions to groups that make only independent expenditures”—like SuperPACs—“also cannot corrupt or create the appearance of corruption.” Id. at 694. Amici are scholars who have conducted empirical research about the appearance of quid pro quo corruption in the campaign finance context. This brief is based on Amici’s prior work appearing in the Journal of Legal Analysis. Amici’s empirical research strongly suggests otherwise. In two studies with complementary methodologies, Amici found that contributions to organizations that make only independent expenditures may in fact create the appearance of quid pro quo corruption. In light of this empirical research, the Court should grant initial hearing en banc and reconsider its decision in SpeechNow, which rests on an incorrect premise.

PACs and Super PACs: Measuring the Changing Nature of Corruption Behavior

Corruption behavior has been notoriously difficult to observe despite its illegal nature and importance to firms and society both economically and politically. Frequently, in empirical research, proxies for corruption are generated. A popular proxy used, as in Smith (2016), is corruption convictions. This study extends Smith’s analysis by examining data from 1998-2016, applying Smith’s shielding and liquidity hypotheses to the current study. This study finds with an updated dataset that the shielding hypothesis is supported; however, corruption convictions do not exhibit significance in the regression model. This study discusses the implications of the latter result and underscores the need for future research and more comprehensive models to examine corruption

Party crashers: Interest groups as a latent threat to party networks in congressional primaries

Recent research asserts that coalitions of party leaders, interest groups, and activists will cooperate to support the nomination of mutually acceptable candidates in primary elections. In this article, I utilize an original data set containing FEC contributions and expenditures data for 1648 candidates who ran in open seat primary elections for the US House from 2006 to 2016 to measure the extent and effects of coordination among interest groups and party organizations. I find that Democratic-aligned interest groups and party leaders coordinate more often and with a more positive substantive effect than their Republican counterparts. Moreover, I provide evidence that, with the advent of super PACs in the second half of the 2010 primary cycle, a small number of interest groups can act as a latent threat to broader coalitions that unite behind a candidate using independent expenditures to outspend the broader coalitions. This increased resource parity has tangible representational consequences.

Why Limits on Contributions to Super PACS Should Survive Citizens United

Soon after the Supreme Court decided Citizens United v. FEC, the D.C. Circuit held all limits on contributions to super PACs unconstitutional. Its decision in SpeechNow.org v. FEC created a regime in which contributions to candidates are limited but in which contributions to less responsible groups urging votes for these candidates are unbounded. No legislator voted for this system of campaign financing, and the judgment that the Constitution requires it is astonishing. Forty-two years ago, Buckley v. Valeo held that Congress could limit contributions to candidates because these contributions are corrupting or create an appearance of corruption. According to the D.C. Circuit, however, Congress may not prohibit multi-million-dollar contributions to satellite campaigns because these contributions do not create even an appearance of corruption. The D.C. Circuit said that a single sentence of the Citizens United opinion compelled its result. It wrote, “In light of the Court’s holding as a matter of law that independent expenditures do not corrupt or create the appearance of corruption, contributions to groups that make only independent expenditures also cannot corrupt or create the appearance of corruption.” This Article contends that, contrary to the D.C. Circuit’s reasoning, contributions to super PACs can corrupt even when expenditures by these groups do not. Moreover, the statement that the D.C. Circuit took as its premise was dictum, and the Supreme Court did not mean this statement to be taken in the way the D.C. Circuit took it. The Supreme Court’s long-standing distinction between contribution limits and expenditure limits does not rest on the untenable proposition that candidates cannot be corrupted by funds paid to and spent on their behalf by others. Rather, Buckley noted five differences between contributions and expenditures. A review of these differences makes clear that contributions to super PACs cannot be distinguished from the contributions to candidates whose limitation the Court upheld. The ultimate question posed by Buckley is whether super PAC contributions create a sufficient appearance of corruption to justify their limitation. This Article reviews the statements of candidates of both parties in the 2016 presidential election, the views of Washington insiders, and public opinion polls. It shows that SpeechNow has sharpened class divisions and helped to tear America apart. he Justice Department did not seek Supreme Court review of the SpeechNow decision. In a statement that belongs on a historic list of wrong predictions, Attorney General Holder explained that the decision would “affect only a small subset of federally regulated contributions.” Although eight years have passed since SpeechNow, the Supreme Court has not decided whether the Constitution guarantees the right to give unlimited funds to super PACs. A final section of this Article describes the efforts of members of Congress and candidates for Congress to bring that question before the Court. The Federal Election Commission is opposing their efforts, offering arguments that, if accepted, would be likely to keep the Court from ever deciding the issue.