Unifying Defeat? Measuring Contentious Primaries' Impact Using Donor Conversion

• In Event: Primary Elections, Candidate Selections, and Voter Responses

Abstract

In this paper, I examine the impact of contentious primaries on party unification while presenting new approach to the longstanding challenge of measuring party unity. I propose and make available a new class of measures-- Donor Conversion Scores -- to capture party unity, specifically, how well local parties and nominees convert primary supporters into general election donors in local districts and nationwide. Using a regression discontinuity approach and runoff primaries to instrument for competitive primaries, I focus on the conversion of party donors to study the impact of runoffs on donor cohesion for the local nominee and diversion of support to party candidates outside of donors' home district. Using contributor-level FEC data on individual contributors from 1975 to 2020, I estimate the impact of greater primary competition on how local nominees are able to unify local donors as well as whether competitive primaries drive donors to losing primary candidates to support candidates outside their district or abstain from further donations. Prior scholarship has shown large negative impacts of competitive primaries and this work contributes to understanding one possible mechanism for such an effect, specifically, party cohesion among the influential donor class. More broadly, I present the theory and construction of Donor Conversion Scores to measure party unity, providing other scholars with a new measure of unity that can be constructed for candidates across office type and level of government as well as for local, state, and national party organizations.

Author

• Kevin J Angell, University of Chicago