Redistricting and Individual Contributions to Congressional Candidates

Abstract

In this paper, we use redistricting to examine the relationship between representatives and a unique group of the public: individual campaign contributors. Our primary objective is to determine what happens to the contribution behavior of representatives and donors after district boundaries shift and the geographic ties between members and donors are undone. At the member level, we use a continuous measure of district change and examine twenty years of congressional elections. We find that as the geographic constituency changes, members receive larger shares of contributions from outside their districts. At the individual donor level, we match donors and contributions to districts before and after the 2012 round of redistricting. Here, we find donors who are drawn out of districts are less likely to support their “old” representative while contributors drawn into districts are more likely to give. At both levels, we find different results for Democrats and Republicans. Our findings suggest that representation can extend beyond Fenno’s geographic constituency and speak to issues related to democratic accountability in a geographic based system of government.