Are Campaign Contributions a Form of Speech? Evidence from Recent US House Elections

This paper investigates the effects of the sources of candidates' campaign funding on their electoral outcomes, with particular emphasis on whether candidates who rely on a narrow base of funding suffer adverse electoral consequences. An extensive dataset consisting of over 650,000 contributions to House candidates in elections from 1980 to 1992 is used. The results reveal a negative relationship between the concentration of contributions and voteshare for open seat candidates and challengers. This may have significant implications for some of the empirical premises underlying the US Supreme Court's landmark {\em Buckley v. Valeo} decision. At very least the finding is an important stylized fact about US elections which is robust over the 1980's and early 1990's.