Past Research
US House of Auctions: A Study on the Effects of Self-funded Candidates on Political Polarization in Congress
Despite a history of disappointing electoral results, self-funded candidates are becoming more common and spending greater sums of money in House elections. As self-funded candidates become increasingly relevant political actors, it is important to understand what effects they are having on the ability of Congress to pass legislation. This paper is intended to analyze whether self-funded candidates affect the levels of polarization and ideological extremity in Congress. The underlying logic is that self-funded candidates, by relying less on outside sources of funding, are able to maintain political views that differ significantly from those of the average constituent. In order to test this hypothesis, I utilize a set of multivariate regression models and a regression discontinuity design based on different tiers of self-funding. I find no evidence that self-funding has any effect on candidate ideology from the multivariate regression models, and some evidence that self-funding may contribute to a candidate’s ideological extremity among lower levels of self-funding using regression discontinuity. However, I conclude that self-funding does not have an effect on political polarization.
By Andrew Albor
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