April 22, 2026

Campaign Finance and Politics in a Polarized Age
Brandice Wrone
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Professor of Political Science  at the Hoover Institution at Stanford and Director of  Center for Revitalizing American Institutions

George Bustin, introducer, and Brandice Wrone

​Minutes of the 27th Meeting of the 84th Year

President George Bustin presided over the meeting. Frances Slade led the invocation. Albert Stark read the minutes of the April 8 meeting (the meeting of April 15 was cancelled). In attendance were 131 members and one guest, Scott Clark, the son of Old Guard member Charles Clark.

George Bustin introduced the speaker, Professor Brandice Canes-Wrone, Professor of Political Science and Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and director of the Center for Revitalizing American Institutions. Professor Canes-Wrone is a highly accomplished Princeton alumna: she is author of over three dozen journal articles and book chapters, has published two books, is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, has served on the editorial boards of numerous political science and political economy journals, and has held elected positions in her professional association. She holds a PhD from Stanford.

The title of Professor Canes-Wrone’s talk was “Campaign Finance and Politics in a Polarized Age: The Role of Campaign Donors in the US Political System.” In her presentation, she covered four topics: historical trends in campaign finance, the effects of money and campaign donors on elections and policy making, donor preferences and motivations, and current policy debates around campaign financing.

Historical trends in campaign financing: The combined cost of congressional and presidential races has grown substantially over the past quarter century, with spending on congressional elections generally higher than that on presidential elections and few differences between Democrats and Republicans. Adjusted for inflation, between 1998 and 2024 spending on congressional elections tripled, from around $3 billion to around $9 billion while spending on presidential elections grew from around $2.5 billion to $5 billion (spending on the 2020 presidential election was higher). Over time, individual contributions to congressional candidates have grown to account for around 80% of candidate portfolios.

The effects of campaign spending on elections: Professor Canes-Wrone noted that more money has not necessarily translated into more votes. In the 2024 presidential election, for example, Democrats raised nearly twice what the Republicans raised--but lost the election. And in the 2016 election Clinton spent almost double what Trump did-- and lost. At the local level, however, she noted that money and advertising may make a difference.

Policy differences among donors and congressional responsiveness: Professor Canes-Wrone discussed the findings of her survey research regarding the policy views of three groups: validated donors, the general public and those defined as more affluent. Unsurprisingly, donors to Republican candidates were more conservative across a set of domestic policy issues than the general population while donors to Democratic candidates were more liberal. Donors to candidates from both parties were substantially more “internationalist” than the general public, with one exception: donors to Republican candidates were less “internationalist” with respect to defense spending. Affluent donors were generally more liberal than both the general public and affluent non-donors.

Another one of Professor Canes-Wrong’s studies used large language models (LLMs) to match roll call senate voting with voter opinions, from 1983 to 2022. She found that a growing share of senate votes were aligned with the views of individual national party donors and less aligned with the opinions of their constituents in the general population.

Current policy debates: Professor Canes-Wrone identified four current policy debates about campaign financing. The first deals with contribution limits to donations to parties; the Supreme Court will decide if such limits are constitutional. The second deals with transparency and political discrimination. The rise of on-line donations—from nearly half of all donors-- has meant that even small donations (under $200) are “public” and hence could be a lead to political discrimination. The third debate deals with contested elections and the effects of party litigation funds (party limits on contributions are higher if designated for election litigation). The number of contested elections has gone up along with major party disbursements on legal expenses, which have grown more than 10-fold since 2016. The final policy debate centers around Citizens United and the impact of Super PACS on election outcomes.

The talk was followed by a lively question and answer period.
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Respectfully submitted,
Marlaine Lockheed