Communicating with Donors and Voters Online

• In Event: Persuasion, Identities, and Campaign Donations

Abstract

How do online political communications from campaigns vary by message purpose and audience, and what implications does this variation have for potential donors and voters? As online fundraising has become the primary financing tool for many U.S. congressional campaigns, email messaging has become increasingly sophisticated, and the associated lists of email addresses have become valuable assets. Both the supply of, and demand for, small contributions has risen dramatically in recent election cycles, making these communications critical components of campaigns. Introducing a comprehensive dataset of tens of thousands of general election campaign emails from House and Senate campaigns in 2018 and 2020, I examine when and how campaigns engage potential donors using issue-based messaging. I find that competitive candidates appealing mainly to potential donors are more negative and less issue-focused than candidates in safer seats -- the result, I conclude, of the stricter messaging constraints on (public-facing) messages in competitive elections. Holding the platform and timing constant, I compare variation issue-based messaging in fundraising communications by district competitiveness to such variation in official e-newsletters from incumbents' congressional offices, which are designed for broader voter/constituent messaging (Cormack 2017). My findings highlight the mechanism by which increasing reliance on small-donor, nationalized online fundraising may challenge the ability of potential donors to finance ideologically-congruent candidates (e.g. Barber 2021), and demonstrates one way in which such fundraising creates negative externalities for voting non-donors.

Author

• Eric Manning, Princeton University