Individual Campaign
Contributions and
Candidate Ideology
ARTICLE BY MICHAEL J. ENSLEY
PRESENTATION BY WILLIAM JERGINS
Overview
Theoretical models of Campaign Donations and Ideology
Individual Campaign Donations
Reverse Causality in Campaign Donations and Ideology
The Model
Results
Conclusions
Theoretical Models
“At least two critical factors have been identified in assessing whether the presence of campaign
contributors lead candidates to adopt divergent policy positions… [Mueller and Stratmann]
argue that how money influences voters’ decisions (i.e., whether advertising is informative or
persuasive is critical to understanding candidate divergence.
The second major factor concerns the assumptions about the behavior of contributors. Welch
(1974, 1980) made a distinction between quid pro quo and ideological models of campaign
contributions.”
Models based on Contributor Behavior
Quid Pro Quo Models
 Where contributions are given to gain influence over policy and favorable policy outcomes
 This model has been shown to work well for PAC Contributions
Ideological Models
 Candidates positions are taken as given and people contribute to the candidates they see as most
favorable ideologically
 This has been shown to work well in modeling individual contributions
 Ensley tests two types of ideological variables to see which better predicts individual campaign
contributions
Reverse Causality
“The argument centers on the observation that incumbents possess numerous advantages, such
as name recognition, charisma and personal characteristics (e.g., racial or religious background),
as well as constituent gratitude for district service and pork barrel projects delivered to the
district. These non-policy advantages provide incumbents who possess thes advantages may be
able to raise money regardless (or in spite of) their policy positions. In short, the link between
policy positions and fundraising may run in the other direction.” -- Ensley
To deal with this problem Ensley Estimated the model using a two stage least squares method
The Model
The dependent variable is the natural log of the total amount of contributions in thousands of
dollars
One model is estimated for each party
Independent variables
 Ideology
 A score between 0 and 1, with 1 meaning most conservative and 0 meaning most liberal
 Divergence
 Is the absolute value of the difference between the two candidates Ideology scores
 Closeness
 A measure of the closeness of the race with four categories: Safe Democrat/Republican, Democrat/Republican Favored, Leans
Democratic/Republican, and No Clear Favorite
The Model Continued
Democratic/Republican Incumbent
 Dichotomous variables that capture if there is an incumbent from the respective party running in the
race
Democratic/Republican Leader
 Dichotomous variables that indicate if the candidate is a member of the parties leadership
Democratic/Republican Quality
 Dichotomous variables that indicate if the candidate has previously held an office
Democratic/Republican Seniority
 Natural log of the number of years served by the incumbent. 0 if the candidate is running for an open
seat or if they are the challenger.
Results with Ideology only
All variables are in the expected directions and
most are statistically significant
The model tells us a Republican two standard
deviations more conservative than the average
will increase expected donations from
$144,000 to $258,000
Similarly a Democrat two sd more liberal than
the average would increase their expected
contributions from $85,000 to $150,000
Results
We see that most of the control variables are
statistically significant and in the desired
direction
Divergence (the ideological variable) however
is not statistically significant for Democrats
and is in the wrong direction for Republicans
Results with both Ideology and
Divergence
Divergence is still statistically insignificant in
the Democratic Model and is significant but in
the wrong direction in the Republican Model
Ensley believes the insignificance and false
sign of Divergence is, because, while campaign
contributions isn’t a simple function of
Candidate Divergence as is often assumed, the
opponents ideology may be in of itself
significant.
Conclusions
“The results presented provide strong evidence that candidate ideology is an essential
component in explaining fundraising from individual citizens, as shown by Francia et al. (2003,
2005). More importantly, these findings hold even if we control for the relative position of the
opponent. Candidate divergence does not appear to have a meaningful effect on fundraising, as
the standard model of ideological campaign contributions usually assumes.
This is a significant finding because it has implications for candidate positioning strategies. If a
candidate can adopt a more extreme policy position and attract campaign contributions without counter
mobilizing contributors on behalf of his or her opponent, this suggest that candidate divergence may be
an equilibrium strategy…. Further, given that individual citizens are the largest single source of
contributions for candidates and the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 raised the contribution limit
from individuals… the centrifugal pull of campaign contributors may have become stronger in recent
elections.” -- Ensley
Economics Joke of the Day
Why don’t Keynesians ever get laid?
There supply doesn’t create it’s own demand.