Illustration by Jim Frazier

Women and ethnic minorities donate small amounts of money to political candidates in ways that have helped to democratize the American electoral process, suggests Associate Professor Vincent Pons.

In his “Small Campaign Donors” paper, Pons and coauthors Laurent Bouton, Julia Cagé, and Edgard Dewitte found that women comprise 54.1 percent of small donors (or those who give less than $200 in an election cycle) compared to only 35.5 percent of large donors. And while minorities are underrepresented in both categories, they are much less so among small donors.

Associate Professor Vincent Pons
(Photo by Russ Campbell)

Associate Professor Vincent Pons
(Photo by Russ Campbell)

“These are big differences,” says Pons, who mined what is believed to be one of the most comprehensive data sets of political contributions made through online fundraising platforms such as ActBlue (Democrat) and WinRed (Republican) and reported to the Federal Election Commission from 2005 to 2020. “And that is good news for democracy in the United States.”

Whereas small donors were previously on the margins of being able to affect the electoral process, technology now allows contributors to easily “donate repeatedly to the same candidate or to other candidates.” Pons was surprised to find that small donors often donate to candidates based on ideol- ogy and platform even if that person has “absolutely no chance of winning or can be expected to win by a landslide.” They also often donate out of district and even outside their state to very famous, very prominent candidates (such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez). “This contributes to the nationalization of American politics,” he says.

Pons hypothesizes that small donors advantage new types of candidates (less centrist, with higher profiles). In the future, he hopes to learn how much the contributions of small donors are driven by political advertising as well as to determine whether candidates who receive significant amounts of small donations run different types of campaigns.

“Our existing research has given us a better understanding of who the small donors are and why they donate,” Pons explains. “Now, we want to understand how small donations affect the behavior of candidates during the campaign and once in office.”

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