The Mixed Effects of Candidate Visits on Campaign Donations in the 2020 Presidential Election

• Published date: 01 May 2022
• Author: Nicholas G. Napolio,Jordan Carr Peterson,Boris Heersink
• Date: 01 May 2022
• DOI: 10.1177/1532673X211041571
• Subject Matter: Articles

2022, Vol. 50(3) 320 –325

https://doi.org/10.1177/1532673X211041571

American Politics Research

© The Author(s) 2021

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DOI: 10.1177/1532673X211041571

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Article

American presidential election campaigns rely on a variety

of approaches aimed at appealing to voters. While political

scientists are generally skeptical that campaign activities like

Get Out the Vote (GOTV) efforts, campaign ads, or other

types of outreach have real and lasting persuasive effects

(Gelman et al., 2016; Kalla & Broockman, 2018; Sides &

Vavreck, 2013), campaigns still hope such activities may

mobilize their voters, and—in the case of close races—have

a meaningful impact on the election results. One of the more

visible approaches campaigns use in this regard are candi-

date visits: appearances by candidates in specific geographic

areas. Notably, existing research has found inconsistent

effects for such visits. While some scholars (Hill et al., 2010;

Holbrook, 1994; Jones, 1998; King & Morehouse, 2004;

Shaw, 1999; Shaw & Gimpel, 2012; Vavreck et al., 2002;

Wood, 2016) find positive effects, others find mixed

(Heersink & Peterson, 2017; Herr, 2002; Holbrook, 2002;

Shaw, 2006) or null effects (Holbrook & McClurg, 2005). In

part, these different findings may be due to inconsistencies in

the unit of analysis—that is, whether scholars focus on

effects at the state, media market, or county level, or whether

they assess the effects of visits on poll numbers or election

results. And, it is possible that different candidates may have

more or less appeal on the stump (Heersink & Peterson,

2017).

However, an additional issue in measuring the effect cam-

paign visits have on voters is scholars’ reliance on aggregate

vote totals or approval ratings as the core metric used. To be

sure, campaigns would like to increase votes or support in

polls. But, as Heersink, Peterson and Peterson (forthcoming)

note, while most studies present their results as testing a uni-

directional effect, using aggregate vote or polling data might

conflate multiple simultaneous effects. That is, generally a

candidate’s visit is expected to either have a positive or no

effect on approval or vote totals.1 It is possible, though, that

candidate visits may mobilize those on the side of the visit-

ing candidates while also counter-mobilizing those voters

inclined toward the other party. That is, when a candidate

visits, we might expect them to galvanize supporters on

‘their’ side on the basis of voluntary political participation

(Verba et al., 1995) or other campaign activities related to

their visit. But recent scholarship has also shown the impor-

tance of negative partisanship in voters’ ability to navigate

American politics (Abramowitz & Webster, 2016, 2018).

That is, voters often rely on their antipathy towards the

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APRXXX10.1177/1532673X211041571American Politics ResearchHeersink et al.

research-article

2021

1Fordham University, New York, NY, USA

2University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA

3North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, USA

Corresponding Author:

Boris Heersink, Department of Political Science, Fordham University,

Rose Hill Campus, 441 E. Fordham Road, New York, NY 10023-7414,

USA.

Email: bheersink@fordham.edu

The Mixed Effects of Candidate Visits

on Campaign Donations in the 2020

Presidential Election

Boris Heersink1, Nicholas G. Napolio2,

and Jordan Carr Peterson3

Abstract

Recent scholarship on the effect of candidate visits in presidential elections has found that appearances by candidates appear

to mobilize both supporters and opponents. Specifically, in the 2016 presidential election, donations to campaigns of the

visiting presidential candidates increased, but—in the case of Republican nominee Donald Trump—so did donations to his

opponent, Hillary Clinton. In this paper, we extend this research by assessing the effect of visits on campaign donations by

presidential and vice presidential candidates in the 2020 election. We find evidence that visits by Donald Trump and Kamala

Harris had strong mobilizing and counter-mobilizing effects, increasing donations to both campaigns. We find weak evidence

that visits by Joe Biden increased contributions to his campaign, but we do not find evidence that his visits had a counter-

mobilizing effect, and we find no evidence that visits by Mike Pence affected donations in either direction.

Keywords

presidential elections, campaign visits, campaign donations