Are Donation-Based Measures of Ideology Valid Predictors of Individual-Level Policy Preferences?
Open accessAbstract
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.
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Evidence indicates that the CF measure has high construct validity.
“Evidence indicates that the CF measure has high construct validity.”
From Importing Political Polarization? The Electoral Consequences of Rising Trade Exposure (2020) · cites this paper as Bonica 2019
Even controlling for legislator party affiliation, CF scores for members of Congress are strongly positively correlated with the likelihood that a representative voted in favor of legislation deemed as conservative and strongly negatively correlated with the likelihood that a representative supported legislation deemed liberal.
“Even controlling for legislator party affiliation, CF scores for members of Congress are strongly positively correlated with the likelihood that a representative voted in favor of legislation deemed as conservative (e.g., stronger immigration enforcement) and strongly negatively correlated with the likelihood that a representative supported legislation deemed liberal (e.g., the Affordable Care Act”
From Importing Political Polarization? The Electoral Consequences of Rising Trade Exposure (2020) · cites this paper as Bonica 2019
Cites
Fear and loathing across party lines: New evidence on group polarization
Iyengar, S., & Westwood, S. J. (2015) · American Journal of Political Science · doi:10.1111/ajps.12152 · Cited by 2,452 · see citing works
Bonica, A. (2016) · Business and Politics · doi:10.1515/bap-2016-0004 · Cited by 147 · see citing works
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Importing Political Polarization? The Electoral Consequences of Rising Trade Exposure
Autor, D., Dorn, D., Hanson, G., & Majlesi, K. (2020) · American Economic Review · doi:10.1257/aer.20170011 · Cited by 1,063 · see citing works
Does information change attitudes toward immigrants?
Grigorieff, A., Roth, C., & Ubfal, D. (2020) · Demography · doi:10.1007/s13524-020-00882-8 · Cited by 254 · see citing works
- Authors
- Bonica, A.
- Affiliations
- Stanford University (US)
- Corresponding author
- Bonica, Adam
- ORCID
- Bonica, Adam
- Venue
- The Journal of Politics
- Publisher
- University of Chicago Press
- Published
- 2019-01
- Volume
- 81
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 327-333
- ISSN
- 0022-3816 (ISSN-L)
- 1468-2508
- OpenAlex
- W3125438516
- Cited by
- 61
- References
- 2
- Citations by year
- 2026: 5 · 2025: 9 · 2024: 8 · 2023: 6 · 2022: 6 · 2021: 8 · 2020: 10 · 2019: 4 · 2018: 2 · 2017: 2 · 2016: 1
- FWCI
- 26.11
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- doi.org
- Locations
- The Journal of Politics (publishedVersion)
- SSRN Electronic Journal (acceptedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › Electoral Systems and Political Participation
- Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Strategy and Management › Political Influence and Corporate Strategies
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Media Influence and Politics
- Keywords
- campaign contributions, policy preferences, personalized prediction, roll-call voting, party identification, internal validity, reliability statistics
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