Into Darkness

  For next Tuesday, read Berry, ch. 6-8

Ballot Measures

• Ballotpedia
• Official campaign finance data
• Support usually declines during the fall -- but not always

Explaining Open Secrets

• How the Center for Responsive Politics assigns individual contributions
• The columns in the Industries table

Why give to disclosing groups rather than dark money?

• Many givers (Adelson) want to get credit.
• Some givers are leery of dark money.
• Late Super PAC disclosure (Schatzinger) sometimes makes it a distinction without a difference.

Outside Spending in 2020:  the Big Picture

"[The] main criterion for super PACs and their independent expenditures remains the competitiveness of races." (Schatzinger 119)

• QED:  2020 data

Congressional Leadership Super PAC (Schatzinger 128-131)

• House Majority PAC and Senate Majority PAC
• Congressional Leadership Fund and Senate Leadership Fund

The Small Donor Revolution in 2020

Advertising

• Ads matter less than people think.
• The effect is inversely proportional to the level of the office at stake.  That is, ads have more effect in a race for school board than for US president.
• All other things being equal, negatives have more effect than positive.  Why?  Cognitive biases.

Social media:  most Americans don't use Twitter.  Most Twitter users don't use it for politics.,

Foreign Influence (more later in the course!)

"Payload content"

(My own favorite)