Takes Money to Make Money: The Correlation Between Personal Wealth and Campaign Contributions
Item
- Description
- The purpose of this paper is to determine whether personal wealth is correlated to the amount of campaign contributions a candidate receives other than self-funding. Senate Financial Disclosure forms from the 2016 Senate general election candidates will be utilized to determine candidate net worth. Total campaign contributions for each candidate (minus self-funding) will be determined based on Federal Election Commission records. We believe that our research will show that there is a statistically significant difference in the overall net worth of candidates and money raised; specifically, we expect to find that the higher the net worth the greater the funds raised. Since increased funding is directly linked to greater electability, we believe this could potentially be a factor in explaining why the Senate is comprised almost exclusively of those in the upper income or wealth brackets. A trend that decreases not only the diversity but the representativeness of U.S. Congressmen.
- Michael Welsh
- William Bendix
- Contributor
- Keene State College
- Creator
- Richard R. Rousseau
- Date
- 2017-10-11
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12088/8117
- Subject
- Political Science
- Type
- Presentation
- Rights
- http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
- Site pages
- School of Sciences and Social Sciences
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