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When Do Voters Respond to Campaign Finance Disclosure? Evidence from Multiple Election Types

Robinson, Thomas S.

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Authors

Thomas S. Robinson



Abstract

In recent American elections political candidates have actively emphasized features of their fundraising profiles when campaigning. Yet, surprisingly, we know comparatively little about how financial information affects vote choice specifically, whether effects differ across types of election, and how robust any effects are to other relevant political signals. Using a series of conjoint experiment designs, I compare the effects of campaigns’ financial profiles on vote choice across direct democratic and representative elections, randomizing subjects’ exposure to additional political cues. I find that while the financial profile of candidates can affect vote choice, these effects are drowned out by non-financial signals. In ballot initiative races, the explicit policy focus of the election appears to swamp any effect of financial information. This paper is the first to explore the comparative effects of financial disclosure across election type, contributing to our understanding of how different heuristics interact across electoral contexts.

Citation

Robinson, T. S. (2022). When Do Voters Respond to Campaign Finance Disclosure? Evidence from Multiple Election Types. Political Behavior, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11109-021-09766-y

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Dec 23, 2021
Online Publication Date Jan 7, 2022
Publication Date 2022
Deposit Date Jan 10, 2022
Publicly Available Date Mar 29, 2024
Journal Political Behavior
Print ISSN 0190-9320
Electronic ISSN 1573-6687
Publisher Springer
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
DOI https://doi.org/10.1007/s11109-021-09766-y

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Publisher Licence URL
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Copyright Statement
This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.




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