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Small Campaign Donors

Author

Listed:
  • Laurent Bouton

    (GU - Georgetown University [Washington], CEPR - Center for Economic Policy Research, NBER - National Bureau of Economic Research [New York] - NBER - The National Bureau of Economic Research)

  • Julia Cagé

    (ECON - Département d'économie (Sciences Po) - Sciences Po - Sciences Po - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique)

  • Edgard Dewitte

    (Sciences Po - Sciences Po)

  • Vincent Pons

    (Harvard Business School - Harvard University, CEPR - Center for Economic Policy Research, NBER - National Bureau of Economic Research [New York] - NBER - The National Bureau of Economic Research)

Abstract

We study the characteristics and behavior of small campaign donors and compare them to large donors by building a dataset including all the 340 million individual contributions reported to the U.S. Federal Election Commission between 2005 and 2020. Thanks to the reporting requirements of online fundraising platforms first used by Democrats (ActBlue) and now Republicans (WinRed), we observe contribution-level information on the vast majority of small donations. We first show that the number of small donors (donors who do not give more than $200 to any committee during a two-year electoral cycle) and their total contributions have been growing rapidly. Second, small donors include more women and more ethnic minorities than large donors, but their geographical distribution does not differ much. Third, using a saturated fixed effects model, we find that race closeness, candidate ideological extremeness, whether candidates and donors live in the same district or state, and whether they have the same ethnicity increase contributions, with lower effects for small donors. Finally, we show that campaign TV ads affect the number and size of contributions to congressional candidates, particularly for small donors, indicating that pull factors are relevant to explain their behavior.

Suggested Citation

  • Laurent Bouton & Julia Cagé & Edgard Dewitte & Vincent Pons, 2021. "Small Campaign Donors," SciencePo Working papers Main hal-03878175, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:spmain:hal-03878175
    DOI: 10.2139/ssrn.3978318
    Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://sciencespo.hal.science/hal-03878175
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    Cited by:

    1. Crutzen, Benoît S.Y. & Flamand, Sabine, 2023. "Leaders, factions and the determinants of electoral success," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 80(C).

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Campaign finance; Campaign contributions; Small donations; ActBlue; WinRed; TV advertising;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • M37 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Marketing and Advertising - - - Advertising
    • P16 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Capitalist Economies - - - Capitalist Institutions; Welfare State

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