The impact of campaign donation sources on election outcomes: donations from within the candidate’s district
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Citation
Abstract
This study seeks to examine the relationship between the percentage of campaign donations coming from within a candidate’s constituency and his likelihood of winning the election, as well as look at the reasons for the existence of that relationship. This is accomplished by performing a logistic regression analysis of likelihood of winning against total percentage donations coming from sources within the candidate’s district for 172 House candidates, followed by a series of case studies intended to allow for deeper examination into why this is the case. Findings indicate that there is no significant relationship between the percentage of donations from the constituency and the candidate’s success and proposes that this is likely due to lack of voter awareness of how a candidate’s campaign is funded due to the media neglecting to address the subject adequately or accurately.