Small Donors

Laurent Bouton, Julia Cagé, Edgard Dewitte and Vincent Pons

No 17310, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research

Abstract: We assemble the first comprehensive dataset on small campaign donors in the U.S. from 2005 to 2020, leveraging the fact that small, previously unobservable contributions now largely flow through fundraising platforms required to report them. Although the number of small donors has surged, their aggregate con-tributions have not grown faster than large donors’. Small donors are more representative of the population but remain disproportionately white and affluent. They support similar candidates as large donors, do not target competitive races more, and are more reactive to salient events and political advertising. We conclude that they are unlikely to transform U.S. elections.

Keywords: Campaign finance; Campaign contributions; Small donations; Actblue; Winred (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 M37 P00 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022-05
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