Support and Preference for Grassroots Fundraising

Do Americans support small individual donations over other sources of political fundraising and does it matter for political behavior? Small online contributions are becoming more prevalent, and political elites and the media often idealize them as leveling the playing field in the American political ecosystem. However, we have little understanding of whether and, if so, how much the public supports small donations as a campaign funding source over others and whether such preferences translate into tangible changes in political behavior. We fill this gap with analyses of original surveys and survey experiments. Our results indicate that the public believes that there should be more small donations in American elections, fewer large individual donations, and to a much lesser extent, fewer PAC contributions. Using multiple conjoint experiments, we test whether candidates with higher dependence on small individual donors are preferred. Surprisingly, candidates relying more on small donors attract a higher likelihood of vote choice, not just within primaries or for Democrats, but across primaries, general elections, and all partisan affiliations. Such beliefs are unshaken when presented with information about lawmakers with the highest reliance on small donors, who are generally perceived as outsiders or ideologically extreme.