Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is: Quantifying the Impacts of Political Spending on Free Expression in American Senate Elections

Abstract

Who elects American senators: voters or donors? Using data collected from the Federal Election Commission, my research seeks to understand the relationship between Senate candidates’ fundraising, the average giving capacity of the donors they attract, and their electoral success or failure. I focus on the fact that not all donors can vote for the candidates they monetarily support, as those with the means to donate to a campaign do not always reside in the state in which the Senate candidate they wish to support is running for election. The data allow me to ask, are out-of-state campaign contributions correlated with Senate candidates’ electoral success? My findings cannot conclusively affirm or reject the possibility of such a relationship between out-of-state donors and Senate election outcomes. However, I argue that further investigation is warranted to understand the extent to which the existing campaign fundraising regime disenfranchises American voters.