2018/12/10 by Adam Bonica · 1 citation
Social Sciences · Business, Management and Accounting · #Electoral Systems and Political Participation #Social Media and Politics #Political Influence and Corporate Strategies
paper · doi:10.1086/700722
This article validates donation-based measures of ideology against a rich battery of policy items from the Congressional Campaign Election Study. Donation-based measures are powerful predictors of policy preferences for a wide range of issues and successfully discriminate between donors from the same party. The overall predictive accuracy and relative improvement over party are comparable to what is achieved by scaling roll call votes in legislatures. The results add to an existing body of evidence on the internal validity and reliability of donation-based measures. They also resolve a standing debate in the literature over whether political donations are a valid indicator of donors’ policy preferences.