It should perhaps comes as little surprise that political donors wield a high degree of influence over the parties and politicians they back.  What’s more, it’s also perhaps no surprise that this influence is hardly benevolent to the health of our democracies.

Nonetheless, interesting new research from Yale University highlights the way in which political donations distort the party political system.

The researchers were especially keen to understand if frequent donors to political parties tend to support a lurch to the extremes for that party.  It’s a conclusion that appears to have little grounding in evidence, with the data suggesting instead that regular donors are more likely to support candidates who stick to the party norms.

“The donor bases of both major parties seem to reward candidates who present themselves as typical Democrats or Republicans,” the researchers say.  “They disfavor candidates who adopt more extreme positions on issues like taxes, abortion, and gun control. At the same time, they show even greater dissatisfaction toward candidates who adopt positions that the other party proposes.”

Sticking to the norms

The researchers conducted a survey-based experiment with a sample of some 24,000 habitual donors, which the researchers define as people who make numerous contributions to political parties every national election cycle.

Each donor was presented with a series of vignettes featuring hypothetical congressional candidates from the party they back.  Within each vignette was an outline of the candidate’s position on three of six core policy areas, including federal income taxes, welfare, social security and concealed handguns.

On two of the three issues, the candidate typically aligned with their party’s prevailing view, but on the third, they were either given a bipartisan view, an ideologically extreme stance, or another party-consistent position.

The vignettes represented candidates who were running in both open-seat primaries and the general election, with respondents asked in both scenarios to say whether they would both vote for the candidate and contribute to their campaign if possible.

Winning support

The data revealed that people were less likely to financially support candidates whose position on that third issue was either extreme or was aligned with the opposing party.  This was especially prominent when the candidate was up for the primary election.

While this was true of those who financially support candidates, it wasn’t true of actual voters.  An identical experiment was undertaken with 1,742 voters, all of whom at least somewhat favor one party over another.

Their results showed that donors appeared to be more sensitive to the candidates’ position than voters, although candidates espousing bipartisan views performed worst among both groups.

“Candidates clearly have incentives to avoid adopting extreme or bipartisan positions,” the researchers say.  “The fact that ordinary voters also punished the bipartisan candidates was interesting, given that people sometimes suppose that holding bipartisan views demonstrates independence and leadership.  It appears that if you generally like Republicans, then you want the party’s candidate to sound and act like a Republican.”