Who Donates to Party Switchers?

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DOI	10.1177/1532673X19858336
Published date	01 March 2020
Date	01 March 2020
Subject Matter	Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/1532673X19858336

American Politics Research

2020, Vol. 48(2) 295 –307

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DOI: 10.1177/1532673X19858336

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I had a Republican colleague—he was very powerful—call me

and ask me to [switch parties]. And he told me that I wouldn’t

have to worry about money. I always had trouble raising money,

I was never good at it . . . But this person told me I would not

have to worry about raising money.

—Interview with a potential switcher from Yoshinaka (2016)

With the typical U.S. House winner spending close to $1.5

million in 2014 (Brookings, 2019), winning and retaining

elective office can be an expensive proposition; doing so after

having changed party labels can be even costlier in terms of

resources and the potential for voter backlash. Yet, over the

last several decades, a handful of incumbent members of

Congress (MCs) have switched parties, and an even larger

number of legislators have done so in lower levels of govern-

ment. This unique situation affords us with the opportunity to

answer the following question: What are the financial conse-

quences of party switching for incumbent politicians?

This question is important for at least two reasons. First,

switching parties is arguably the most important career deci-

sion for a sitting politician, and it carries electoral, represen-

tational, and legislative consequences. The reaction among

voters, colleagues, staffers, and the media can produce back-

lash. Yet, we know little about how switchers attempt to miti-

gate such uncertainty and shore up their bid for reelection.

We open the “black box” of postswitch electoral politics and

argue that campaign fundraising plays an important role.

Second, we use this unique situation in which an incumbent’s

relationship with constituents is altered to build on previous

research and further explore the intersection of the geogra-

phy and the motivations of donors.

Our results show that switchers turn to out-of-district

donors who are more likely to exert ideological behavior by

donating to like-minded politicians with whom they lack

geographical ties. Switchers are also more likely to rely on

party sources to remedy any shortcomings felt among other

donors. Our results help disentangle the dynamics that occur

in the aftermath of the decision to switch parties: switchers

turn to out-of-district, ideological donors and party support

to alleviate the local costs of switching parties. In short, we

suggest that the role of constituents living outside the

district—or what Fenno (1978) calls the “surrogate

constituency”—is an important source of support for incum-

bents who face significant in-district uncertainty.1

Our article makes several contributions. First, we expand

the literature on party switching by examining a mechanism

to overcome the electoral costs of a switch. Second, we esti-

mate the first-ever causal inference-based model of party-

switching effects in the United States by juxtaposing

traditional observational models to models that rely on a

selection-on-observables strategy. Third, we highlight what

Fenno (1978) calls the “surrogate constituency” in shoring

up support for vulnerable incumbents. In the context of an

increasingly polarized polity, our results point to another fac-

tor that can exacerbate the partisan divide: an increased reli-

ance on ideological donors who may pour money into any

district to help vulnerable incumbents. Fourth, we take a

novel approach to the study of representation. Rather than

estimating the effect of a representational shock on the behav-

ior of legislators (for instance, the effect of redistricting on

858336APRXXX10.1177/1532673X19858336American Politics ResearchHamel and Yoshinaka

research-article2019

1University of California, Los Angeles, USA

2University at Buffalo, SUNY, USA