I’ll Be Disclosed By Christmas: What ‘Pop-Up PACs’ Can Teach Us About Disclosure and Dark Money.

Abstract

Since the Citizens United decision of 2010, the amount of “dark money”–or independent expenditures from groups that don’t disclose their donors–has grown to encompass a significant slice of total spending in American elections. How does the absence of disclosure affect the behavior of both donors and electioneering organizations? While the secretive design of dark money makes data on them extremely limited, the 2018 election provided a useful stand-in to examine the role of disclosure in elections. ‘Pop-Up PACs’ are super PACs that form just after the last disclosure federal deadline before an election–allowing them to postpone revealing their donors until after voters have gone to the polls. In total, 63 super PACs employed this tactic during the 2018 midterms, spending a combined $21.6 million. Examining these late-disclosing super PACs, I find that donors who gave to Pop-Up PACs supported a far less ideologically extreme set of candidate when giving directly and transparently to other candidates. These late-disclosing super PACs also supported more ideologically extreme candidates than did super PACs who disclosed their donors prior to an election. In sum, these results add credence to theories that donors alter their behavior in response to social pressures and that being able to hide the sources of one’s money correlates with an electoral organization eschewing moderates in favor of extremists.

Keywords: dark money, super PACs, campaign finance, disclosure, social-pressures