Party Polarization, Political Alignment, and Federal Grant Spending at the State Level

Abstract

Research on the distribution of federal expenditures has provided mixed evidence showing that states with more legislators who belong to the president's party and states with more legislators in the chamber majority tend to receive a larger allocation of federal funds. We add to this research by considering how political polarization and political alignment impact these presidential and congressional determinants of how the domestic US budget is distributed to the states. Our results show that states with a larger percentage of senators in the majority can secure a larger share of federal grant expenditures per capita when political polarization is relatively low.

Keywords: Federal Spending, Majoritarian, Political Alignment, Political Polarization

JEL Classification: H10, H50, H61, H77