Who Donates in Campaigns?
The Importance of Message, Messenger, Medium, and Structure

Utilizing surveys of Obama, McCain, and Romney donors, the authors explore the question: who donates to presidential campaigns?

David B. Magleby (Author), Jay Goodliffe (Author), Joseph A. Olsen (Author)

9781108453714, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 16 April 2020

486 pages, 57 b/w illus. 34 tables
23 x 15.3 x 2.9 cm, 0.6 kg

'Magleby, Goodliffe, and Olsen have made a major advance in our understanding of donors and the effect of their donations in modern electoral campaigns in America … The result is a massively important advance in our understanding of who donates and why they do, increasingly critical questions in today's campaign environment.' John Aldrich, Duke University, North Carolina

While much is known about who votes in American elections, much less is known about who donates. In this book, the authors utilize a unique and historically unprecedented data set of donors from the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections to answer longstanding questions: what is the relationship between donors and candidates? How do candidates attract and respond to contributors? How do campaign strategies reflect changing campaign finance laws and the development of the internet? With unprecedented cooperation from the Obama, McCain, and Romney campaigns, the authors investigate presidential campaign donors at all giving levels to produce the most systematic and complete analysis of donors to presidential nominees to date. As elections are decided increasingly by donors' dollars, Who Donates to Campaigns? provides relevant research on the broader trends in partisan polarization and, more generally, on how campaigns can engage more citizens in political participation.

1. The importance of donors in American politics
2. Profile of donors in 2008 and 2012
3. What motivates donors to contribute?
4. How the Internet, BCRA, and super PACs have affected campaigns, donor attitudes, and behavior
5. New, repeat, continuing, and lapsed donors
6. What distinguishes small donors?
7. The diminished gender gap among democratic donors
8. The timing of donations in presidential campaigns
9. Policy implications of changing laws, regulations, and of who donates
10. What explains donor behavior?

Subject Areas: Political campaigning & advertising [JPVL], Comparative politics [JPB], Politics & government [JP]