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A Panel Probit Analysis of Campaign Contributions and Roll Call Votes Wawro, Gregory Uploaded 09-07-1999 Keywords campaign finance panel data methods logit probit random effects GMM estimators Abstract Political scientists have long been concerned with the effects of campaign contributions on roll call voting. However, methodological problems have hampered attempts to assess the degree to which contributions affect voting. One of the key problems is that it is difficult to untangle the effect of contributions from the effect of a member's predisposition to vote one way or another. That is, political action committees (PACs) contribute to members of Congress who are likely to vote the way the PACs favor even in the absence of contributions. A PAC donation to a friendly member might be misconstrued as causing a member to vote a particular way, when in reality the member would have voted that way to begin with. It is therefore crucial to account for a member's propensity to vote in a particular way in order to assess the influence of contributions. One way that studies have done this is to use ideological ratings developed by interest groups. This approach is problematic, however, because the ratings are built from roll call votes and thus will introduce bias if campaign contributions affect the votes used to compute the ratings. In order to circumvent the problem of accounting for voting predispositions, I use panel data methods which, unfortunately, have seen almost no application in political science. These methods enable us to account for individual specific effects which are difficult or impossible to measure, such as the predisposition to vote for or against a particular type of legislation. To employ these methods, I build panels of roll call votes on legislation that business and labor groups have indicated are important for their interests. Using panel data estimators, I determine the effects of contributions from corporate and labor PACs on the probability of voting ``aye'' or ``nay'', while accounting for members' propensities to vote in particular directions. I find that contributions have minimal to no effects on roll call votes, while short-term factors including monthly unemployment and support for the president in the district have substantial effects.

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A Dynamic Panel Analysis of Campaign Contributions in Elections for the U.S. House of Representatives Himmelberg, Charles P. Wawro, Gregory Uploaded 07-17-1998 Keywords campaign finance panel data methods dynamics GMM estimators censoring Abstract Political scientists have recognized the importance of dynamics in understanding the role of campaign finance in congressional elections. Yet for the most part, researchers have not exploited available data to its fullest or used appropriate methods to answer questions of interest. Though the Federal Election Commission's reporting and disclosure requirements enable us to use panel data models, researchers have ignored these powerful tools. One of the main advantages of panel data methods is that they enable us to account for unobserved individual and temporal effects that, if not accounted for, might lead us to incorrect inferences. In this paper we describe the problems with estimating dynamic panel models and discuss techniques that correct for these problems. We apply recently developed panel data methods to estimate a dynamic model of campaign finance and assess the usefulness of these methods by examining the robustness of results obtained with more traditional methods. We examine the relationship between past and current campaign contributions to incumbents and challengers during the 1986 through 1992 election cycles. Dynamic panel estimators give results that differ in substantively interesting ways from those given by standard estimators. In particular, the estimates obtained from dynamic panel methods suggest that challengers who are successful fundraisers can cut into the fundraising efforts of incumbents.

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The Consequences of Majority-Minority Districts for Representation: Evidence of Partisan Mobilization, Countermobilization and Demobilization Brandt, Patrick T. Bailey, Michael Uploaded 08-21-1997 Keywords Multinomial probit panel data methods simulated maximum likelihood probability simulation redistricting Abstract Few analyses of the effects of race-based congressional redistricting have used survey data to analyze the implications of redistricting. This type of micro-level data can add significant intuition to aggregate data analysis. This paper looks at whether voters respond to redistricting by mobilizing, demobilizing, or countermobilizing using panel data from the 1990-1992 National Election Study. A 2-period vote choice model is estimated using a multiperiod multinomial probit model, and controlling for the effects of redistricting. Results show that the presence of black Democratic candidates in majority-minority districts after redistricting reduces turnout by white voters for the Democratic candidates.