Empirical Research Database


1		Public Discourse and Pre-Election Debate
2	Date	Title	Author(s)	Citation Type	Data Examined	Question(s) Asked	Key Findings
3	2016	In the Shadows of Sunlight: The Effects of Transparency on State Political Campaigns	Abby K. Wood and Douglas M. Spencer	Law Journal	A dataset of over 175,000 individual contributors to state gubernatorial and legislative campaigns between 2000 and 2008, comparing the pool of contributors in states that strengthened their disclosure rules to the pool of contributors in states that did not change their disclosure rules and practices in the set time period.	To determine whether stricter disclosure laws have a chilling effect on speech.	“On average, less than one donor per candidate is likely to stop contributing when the public visibility of campaign contributions increases.” Additionally, there are no consistent chilling effects for small donors or ideological outliers as is often assumed.
4	2015	Experimental Evidence on the Relationship between Candidate Funding Sources and Voter Evaluations	Conor M. Dowling and Michael G. Miller	Unpublished Paper	Participant responses to two surveys: the 2010 Cooperative Congressional Election Study, and a 2012 online survey of U.S. residents.	To examine whether voters consider information on the source of campaign funds to be an important piece of information when assessing candidates.	Candidates who received a majority of contributions from individuals were rated more highly by potential voters than candidates who received a majority of contributions from interest groups.
5	2014	The Effects of Increased Campaign Finance Disclosure: Evaluating Reform Proposals	Conor M. Dowling and Amber Wichowsky	Academic Journal	A 2014 experiment in which more than 1,500 subjects were randomly assigned to receive fabricated information about an outside group supporting a fictional candidate.	To determine what types of disclosure information voters pay attention to, and whether there are partisan differences in responsiveness to campaign finance data.	“Campaign finance information affected candidate evaluations and vote choice, but...subjects’ evaluations were particularly sensitive to whether they were told that out-of-state donors were behind the outside group.”
6	2004	Perceptions of Corruption and Campaign Finance: When Public Opinion Determines Constitutional Law	Nathaniel Persily and Kellie Lammie	Law Journal	Survey and polling data from a variety of sources, including the record presented in McConnell and data from the National Election Study from 1958 to 2002.	To understand public perception of corruption in general, and the data linking such perceptions to problems in the campaign finance system.	While “a large majority of Americans believe that the campaign finance system contributes to corruption in government, the data do not suggest that campaign finance reform will have an effect on these attitudes.”