The Influence of Economic Geography on Individual Campaign Contributions

Abstract

Political behavior takes place within a geospatial context, yet studies of political phenomena frequently ignore the influence of geography. In this paper we examine how the spatial structure of a citizen’s regional economy affects an important and understudied form of political participation – individual contributions to candidates for the U.S. Congress. We hypothesize that citizens living in more interconnected regions will be more likely than citizens living in less connected regions to target their donations to candidates throughout their region. To test this hypothesis, we geo-locate all campaign contributions to U.S. Congressional candidates made by individual donors in the 2007-08 election cycle. We use several measures to characterize the interconnectedness of the donor’s MSA. Our results indicate that citizens direct their campaign donations in ways that reflect their spatial context, particularly the economic geography of their region. This result has important implications for how we understand and study political behavior.